Anti-Masonry
Anti-Masonry consists of radically differing criticisms from frequently incompatible political institutions and organized religions that oppose each other, and are hostile to Freemasonry in some form.
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 and allegedly providing safe haven for dissidents.
[26] The far-right groups exercised considerable political power in Finland in the 1930s and 40s, pressuring the government to expel Freemasons from the armed forces.
[27][28] Patriotic Citizens of Viitasaari wanted to purge Jews and Freemasons from the country and spread anti-Masonic booklets in the prints of tens of thousands.
[29] Patriotic People's Movement MP Paavo Susitaival was a prominent opponent of freemasonry and claimed freemasons were responsible for ritual murders.
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.
In post-war Hungary, lodges were re-established, but after five years,[35] 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".
[36] In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that "Freemasonry has succumbed to the Jews and has 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.
[37][not specific enough to verify] 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".
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 film virulently denounces Freemasonry, parliamentarianism and Jews as part of Vichy's drive against them and seeks to prove a Jewish-Masonic plot.
The preserved records of the RSHA—i.e., 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.
[46] Following the military coup of 1936, many Freemasons trapped in areas under Nationalist control were arrested and summarily killed in the White Terror, along with members of left wing parties and trade unionists.
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.
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.
Similar atrocities occurred across the country: fifteen masons were shot in Logroño, 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, Cádiz and Granada were brutally rounded up and shot, and in Seville, the entire membership of several lodges were butchered.
[50] 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.
It was as a result of the intervention of the Grand Master of the Antients, The 4th Duke of Atholl, and the Acting Grand Master of the Moderns, the Earl of Moira that a special exempting clause was inserted into this legislation in favour of societies "held under the Denomination of Lodges of Freemasons" provided that they had been "usually held before the Act" and their names, places and times of meeting and the names of the members were annually registered with the local clerk to the justices of the peace.
[52] In the United Kingdom, anti-Masonic sentiment grew following the publication of Martin Short's 1989 book, Inside the Brotherhood (Further Secrets of the Freemasons).
[56] In 2004, Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly, said that he blocked Gerard Elias' appointment to counsel general because of links to hunting and Freemasonry,[57] although it was claimed by non-Labour politicians that the real reason was in order to have a Labour supporter, Malcolm Bishop, in the role.
[61] By the middle of the 19th century, Freemasonry and its semi-secret organizational structures were able to establish lodges predominantly among those populations living in the Ottoman Empire and its provinces[59] (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, and Macedonia).
[59] This began about 15 years after the declaration of 1839 Reform Edicts and Freemasonry became successful in the Ottoman Empire under the reigns of sultans Abdulmejid (1839–1861), Abdulaziz (1861–1876) and Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909).
[59] During the 19th century, numerous prominent Muslim scholars, thinkers, and politicians, such as 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri (1808–1883), Jamal al-Din Afghani (1839–1897), and Riza Tevfik (1869–1949) were active in Freemasonry.
[62] Other notable scholars, intellectuals, and politicians who became Freemasons included Sa'd Zaghlul, Ya'qib Sannu', Adib Ishaq, Tawfiq Pasha, and the influential Islamic jurist and theologian Muhammad 'Abduh.
[64][65] During the early 20th century, the Syrian-Egyptian Islamic theologian Mūhammād Rashīd Ridâ (1865–1935) played the crucial role in leading the opposition to Freemasonry across the Muslim world.
[64][67] The Egyptian newspaper Al-Manār, belonging to Muhammad Rashid Rida, played a critical role in spreading these conspiracy theories.
Rida also believed that the Jews were planning to take over Al-Aqsa Mosque and expel the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the Holy Land.
In his book The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings of Freemasonry, Finney not only ridiculed the masons, he also explained why he viewed leaving the society as an essential act three years after he entered seminary.
