Freemasons are anti communist and have helped the CIA in killing communists
Many Freemasons in Italy had connections with the government of Benito Mussolini and far-right organizations. But i doubt they are really a threat to Cuba, they have basically zero political power there and probably is just a club for old people.
the freemasons do suck but only in their capacity of being a boys club of obnoxious businessmen.
these guys probably think they're a Jewish conspiracy which is wrong because some of the worst antisemities I've ever known were freemasons
These guys
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party#:~:text=The%20Anti%2DMasonic%20Party%2C%20also,take%20positions%20on%20other%20issues.
Reading more about these guys they are actually a good description of Haz’s weird cult. Haz is Thurlow Weed.
Nazbol LGBT-phobic chuddery and other nonsense aside, i do agree with the basic sentiment that a socialist state should get rid of anti-communist bourgeois cults and secret societies such as the Free Masons, Skull & Bones, etc.
I'd even go as far as to say that it's not bigoted to target quasi-religions like Scientology and Mormonism. The longer they are allowed to stay around, the more they get to justify themselves as legitimate faiths.
The free masons aren't as big a deal today as they were in the 19th century. The Anti-Mason party formed in an era where the masons were actually assassinating journalists and controlling large parts of the government. So I'd say Thurlow Weed's apoplectic rage towards the masons was a little more justified than the dorks in the OP's screenshots.
I’d even go as far as to say that it’s not bigoted to target quasi-religions like Scientology and Mormonism. The longer they are allowed to stay around, the more they get to justify themselves as legitimate faiths.
trying to understand the difference in legitimacy between mormonism and catholocism :cat-confused:
Careful now, you're dangerously close to realizing that all of Western Civilization and the Middle East is built on top of Talmud fanfictions...
Talmud fanfictions…
Judaism itself started off (as far as archeology and anthropology is concerned) as a strain of Israelite polytheism which elevated YHWH, a national God of Israel, and a storm/war God within the pantheon, to the status of a God above the other Gods ( like Zeus in Greek polytheism) and then over time the Ancient Israelites shed their beliefs in the other Gods of the Israelite Pantheon, and begin to believe in YHWH as an abstract God, in the monotheistic sense. It's very interesting. They even got rid of his consort Asherah. The Hera to his Zeus. Or the Rhea to his Cronos. However you wanna look at it.
Other ancient Semitic religions from Mesopotamia and the Levant had Asherah be the consort of similar Gods like Baal, El, Elkunirsa, Amarru, Anu, Amm, and Assur. So YHWH evolved from a polytheistic God, to a Henotheistic God, to a Monotheistic God, over the course of several political developments within the Ancient Israelite culture.
Similar developments occurred in Pre-Islamic Arabia.
it's a good question. I don't know if I have a good answer. Let me put it this way, I would view shutting down Catholics as religious persecution. I would not view shutting down scientology as religious persecution. One has hundreds of years of cultural history and millions of people who lived and died under these traditions. That makes it significantly different from something like scientology. You should question me, because I'm not an expert on these things. I'm not trying to go full lib here and say that the awful things that Catholic church does is legitimate, but simply that cults are much harder to snuff out once they become cultures. The "legitimacy" itself is socially constructed and not necessarily a real thing, but you can see a significant difference between how cults are viewed and how well established old world religions are viewed.
A socialist party can lose a lot of public favor when they persecute well established world religions. I remember watching Hakim's (who is Muslim) video on Soviet mistakes we should learn from, and persecuting old world religions was one of them. But I also look at newish religions like Mormonism and Scientology and don't want to see them grow to the status of the old religions, as it would only complicate matters further.
Which will wither away first, religion or the state? I'm actually not trying to do a sectarianism, I'm not even sure I'm an anarchist any more, merely making the point that if we ever do get to embark on a socialist project with the goal of communism, religion should be down near the bottom of the list of things we should worry about. I think people should be free to practice whatever religion they wish, regardless of how silly it seems to me. I think our energy should be focused squarely on repressing bourgeois interests directly. I know religion can be an entry to counter-revolutionary sentiment, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. I say you can worship how you want, but the minute you act against the worker's state go directly to :gulag:
know religion can be an entry to counter-revolutionary sentiment, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I say you can worship how you want, but the minute you act against the worker’s state go directly to gulag
i agree with you entirely and I wish i had better answers on what the difference between a "legitimate" religion and a bourgeois cult/mafia is (the "church" of scientology for instance has a private navy called Sea Org). As you suggested these organizations can be used as powerful tools for organizing the bourgeoisie as a class, and their petit bourgeois reactionary minions. I don't know what best way to combat that is.
Well they definitely can't keep their Navy. Hopefully we get the chance to find out, but I imagine the ones that are going to be a problem will tell on themselves fairly early on.
I'd also point out there are "Free Church" Scientologists that have broken from the mainline church because of it's excesses. I think they're deeply odd, but I'd say let them be.
A fuckton more Catholics in the Global South. Whole majorities of countries, unlike the Mormons. Also some priests who have been willing to participate in revolutionary movements.
Both reactionary, genocidal cults with longstanding ties to the forces of imperialism. The Holy See should be done away with ultimately, but that would be dramatically more difficult and unpopular than LDS (outside of Utah).
not scientology
not obvious cults/grifts founded in the last 100-200 years
at least with older religions there's centuries of people who were born and died legitimately believing. even if they started off as cults, they have accumulated huge amounts of cultural history independent of their origins. I would not like to see people in 500 years treating scientology and falun gong with the same level of respect as, say, Christianity or Buddhism.
not scientology
not obvious cults/grifts founded in the last 100-200 years
what's the functional difference between the Vatican and the Scientology HQ?
I already gave my thoughts on this elsewhere in the thread. People asked good questions and I gave them the best answers I could.
But yeah: not much. I think the difference is not in the construction of the religious hierarchy itself, but in how historically established the traditions are among the people. There is a point where a cult becomes a culture. That point is admittedly arbitrary, but I think there's a significant difference between trying to snuff out a modern cult before it becomes too powerful and trying to snuff out a ~2000 year old religion with tens of millions of adherents.
From Wikipedia
Freemasonry in China is outlawed by the Chinese Communist Party.[citation needed]
Nothing about it on the talk page. I assume that's a fringe article where one person is able to put basically whatever they want on the page with no oversight.
I mean, not a lot of Freemasons in a country that was functionally closed until the 1960s. There's probably some buy/hire/own-local provision that's being mischaracherized as anti-Masonic, without any materialist consideration behind it.
Man their brains are so big and wrinkly I can't even understand what they're saying
A good friend's dad is a freemason AND a hotep. I used to invite myself over to her parents house for dinner all the time when we were in college just to hear the wild ass shit that dude would spew. Just mind blowing levels of contradicting conspiracy theories, but very entertaining.
Would he ever talk about Yakub inventing white people in a cave?
Ha ha ha, he actually wasn't into Farrakhan/NoI, he was a Black Jesus guy.
I always thought Hotep referred specifically to LGBT-phobic anti-feminist far-right male Afrocentrists who embrace the Black Egyptian hypothesis and/or the Black Israelite hypothesis. Though people tend to be loose with the term.
I mean, he was all of those things, the rabidly Christian thing was one of the contradictions.
Yeah, he's since toned it down a little, I hear. Maybe had something to do with his daughter coming out, lol.
My grandpa was in the Freemasons. They meet in like one of those VFW halls and mostly drank beer. They'd do a toy drive at Christmas and hosted some kind of dinner to raise money for the local high school sports teams.
He was also a lizard man who wanted to turn all humans into genderless robots, but he gave me caramels so yeah, nice guy.
I know two guys in the freemasons. It's basically a networking club where they try to foster conversation and have weirdo traditions.
when european racists project hard and talk about
CW
migrant "r*pe gangs"
it reminds me so much of American Frats. Fuck frats. petit bouj patriarchy bullshit tbh.
Their ideology is basically normie slightly-right-of-center-ism. I'm not going to deny a lot of powerful people in the West have been involved with them, but I think we should consider, most societies have clubs, fraternal orders, and other semi-secret orgs that people in that society utilize for upward mobility. I don't think it's some dark creepy shit, I think it's just when you give wealthy white dudes a club house they all end up jerking each other off till they're in the upper class.
yeah it's a way for local petit-bouj to foster nepotism and get their large sons cushy jobs at the local racism factory
Some CIA intern whose job is to browse social media all day is probably giggling like a moron in his Langley cubicle watching these dopes channel all their mind-waves into accusing each other of freemasonry, instead of going after the secret organization that actually controls the world's governments, subverts the media, and threatens socialism :cia:
Hold on guys, about to go on a 6 month freemason conspiracy bender so I can open my 4th eye (the brown eye) and gaze into the
That one dprk quote calling Joe Biden a rabid dog but it's applied to these dweebs
No Vic, Trots love Cuba because they see it as a victim, a martyr, in state-form.
If Cuba had to strike down a counter-revolution, White Western Marxists™ would turn their back on Cuba in an instant.
Chud format but:
"How will this help the cause of communism?
"Communism?"
Who wants to tell them that Andrew Jackson, the very guy every boomer Seppo and frogposter has a waifu pillow of, AND the proto-Hitler, was a freemason?
