Is the world ran by masons

Accusations that political power or world affairs are controlled by the fraternity are long-standing libels contradicted by history and the governing laws of the organization 1. Anti-Masonic writers such as the Abbé Barruel, John Robison, and Cadet de Gassicourt promoted theories alleging that secret political ascendancy, Templar vengeance, or revolutionary plots were nurtured within lodges 124. Waite treats Gassicourt's claim of a secret tribunal directing royal assassinations and revolutions as a mythical conspiracy based on errors of fact 4.

In the Craft, the Ancient Constitutions of 1723 expressly forbid political interference and require members to be peaceable subjects of the civil powers, keeping the peace and taking their government for granted without propagandizing political theories or crusades 1. In the Scottish Rite, Pike cites Barruel's own admission that English Masons engaged in no plots or conspiracies against governments, maintaining their duty as law-abiding subjects 2.

Far from steering world events, the fraternity has repeatedly been the target of state and religious suppression 121. Autocratic rulers and totalitarian creeds—including Prince Metternich, Papal decrees, Nazism, and Communism—have banned or driven lodges underground because the fraternity's core principles of tolerance, equality, and fraternalism directly contradicted despotic governance 121. In the United States, political anti-Masonry briefy formed a third party in the 1830s attempting to bar members from civil office, though the movement quickly collapsed 13.