Had to come in on this one.
"Secret societies: Harmless members-only clubs or dire threats to democracy?"
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”
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John F. Kennedy, April 27, 1961
Long before the fiction writer Dan Brown arrived on the literary scene with his stories of esoterica, people have been intrigued with the idea of secret societies working in the shadows, carrying out evil plots against them. On this score, it would be hard to beat the Freemasons.
Here is a group of characters that has piqued the imaginations of men throughout the centuries. Back in 1798, John Robison, a professor of Natural Philosophy, and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, published a book that made a big splash throughout Europe. The publication carried the lengthy title, ‘Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies.’ Had John Robison attempted to publish such a book in our day, he would have been quickly written off as a conspiracy theorist nut job along the lines of Alex Jones. But in 1798, the book was taken quite seriously.
https://www.rt.com/news/564101-secret-societies-global-agenda/