TL:DR - In the current climate, the correct response to secretive groups that subverted your culture is to become the next secret group.
Back on Old Voat I had a conversation with a user about The Masons. He said something along the lines of “anything that hides in darkness must be doing something wrong, so I can’t accept it.” I think that’s a pretty standard Christian attitude toward the issue of secret societies. And it make senses, in a way. If your God is the Light, then hiding from that must mean you’re doing something He wouldn’t like. That spiritual attitude also translated directly into a cultural one: when Christianity was the dominant social force, secret societies were probably doing something that culture wouldn’t approve of.
Unfortunately, it’s an outdated attitude. You might have noticed that the culture has changed. Not just for Christians, but everyone. Things that reasonable people would have considered abhorrent are now celebrated. You are no longer the dominant social force. With that loss of power, the attitude of declaring that anything clandestine must be evil creates an axe-sized gap in the armor or well-intentioned people.
Now, I’m not suggesting that a lot of evil hasn’t been perpetrated in scret. In fact I would agree that it had to be. Twenty years ago if they were publicly declaring the right to mind-control your children toward self-mutilation, they would have died socially, if not physically. Now however they face no such risk. Secrecy is a tool of the weak, used until other weapons are available. Those other weapons, such as lawfare and propaganda, are now wielded by the enemy. In fact they wield them so powerfully that we pay the enemy to use them.
Remember this: Secrecy is a TOOL of the weak, UNTIL other weapons are feasible (bearfromstartrack mode activated). Secrecy doesn’t mean you aren’t fighting your enemies. It just means you’re being honest about your current odds. It has nothing to do with morality, the favor of the Gods (generally speaking), or any sort of preordained justice. Rather it stems from a cold, honest measure of what can be done in public and what must be done in secret. Strategy, plain and simple.
If you’re among the people who see themselves as too righteous for secrecy, who considers legitimate strategies to be ordained by the forces above, then please consider this: Every organization contains secret societies within it, from corporations to religions to governments. Sometimes they’re Masons, sometimes they’re The Black Hand. Sometimes, they’re the Sons of Liberty. Each of those groups achieved dramatic change, and each of them operated in shadows until it could cast a light of its own devising. None of them were afraid to do anything necessary to bring that light from the heavens down to hard, material reality.
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Secrecy is a tool of the weak, not necessarily the corrupt. And frankly, giving your opponents sole control over such a powerful weapon is stupid. Will you hand every dagger to evil men, then cry out when they stab you?
Here’s something else I read here, much more recently: Never try to be better than your enemies. Be so much worse that they cower in fear (I’m paraphrasing). Sadly, many still prefer to sit back and wait for God do the hard part. The bare fact is that we lose because we let them have all the cards. Your opponents control the dominant culture, and the secret one. They club you with the law by day, and conspire to rape your children at night. Part of the reason that happened was the stubborn refusal to operate in darkness.
Be smart. Build societies, away from the eyes of the evil, until your strength can’t be denied.
And for those Christians mentioned in the beginning: I would remind them that Christianity began as a persecuted minority of common people, gathering strength away from the eyes of an oppressive empire, and using all manner of secrecy to protect itself. In short, remember the Ichthys.
Thanks to the posters paraphrased above whose names I can’t remember.
