The Masons controlled post war Italy for a period of time with the help of the Vatican and CIA :the-more-you-know:
Nah, they were unsuccessful... at first. Then got every demand fulfilled during the Berlusconi [cooincidentally, a member of P2] governments and successive ones.
They (capitalists and representatives) meet quite openly. masonry can be very fucked (see berlusconi) or can just be “no-girls-allowed” club for cigar smoking by dudes.
My grandfather was a freemason, well ex-freemason
Never met the man but according to my dad he didn't have a single good thing to say about the organization, claimed it was a ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme which according to my research checks out
They charge increasingly large sums of money to advance in rank so at the upper echelons it's mostly a networking opportunity for the ruling class and below that it's all about extracting as much wealth from the other members as possible
There's a book I read a few years ago by a gay millenial ex-mason from a prominent family that had been in the Texas lodge for generations and he had advanced to almost the highest level possible before quitting due to the homophobia he experienced from some of the older members
At the end of the book he claims they attempted to have him killed by running his car off the road after he left but before that there are only a few 👁things he points out including finding a human skull in the attic that the highest ranking guy knew about and told him not to do anything about, also the fact that said head honcho was taking orders from someone unknown
they vary quite a lot. some of them suck a lot. some of them only suck as much as a boomer boys only club inherently sucks. which is surprisingly not all that much.
most of my knowledge of them comes from european ones though. i feel like texan freemasons probably tend toward the "sucks a lot" variety
Oh for sure there are different factions based on region and politics, the worst ones I've heard rumors about are the southern ones who want to bring back chatel slavery and conquer Mexico
Freemasonry is one of those things that absolutely used to be a thing but rotted with age, until today they're just a social club/ingroup for people who have been in it forever. It's like a bar with the same people who have been going there every week since 1979.
