Is It Paranoia

If they really are out to get you?

According to Social Blade, Candace Owens has 5.94 million subscribers on Youtube. And, according to Hype Auditor, her subscriber counts are growing by thousands each and every day. This makes her podcast the 22nd most listened to in the United States, according to Triton. On Spotify she is number 12 and growing. Fortune reports that these subscribers are not disengaged, indeed that her subscriber engagement counts have risen as high as number 1 in the world.

Beyond Youtube, she holds just under 7 million followers on X, and more than 5 million on Instagram, this according to Fortune.

In practice, what does all of this mean? It means that she actually has more viewers than some well known television news programs.

Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

Here is what she told her millions of followers yesterday:

“Freemason military hit squad…”

Well, golly, I do hate to complain, but when I was elected Grand Master of Masons, my Grand Secretary never told me that I had a “military hit squad” at my disposal. What a jerk. He must have wanted to keep all the good stuff for himself.

You get the idea, and if you watch the video you’ll see that it goes downhill from there.

Why would anyone, let alone millions of people believe this nonsense?

Because we are very rapidly turning into a post-literate society in which truth is no longer valued, or indeed acknowledged to exist. Our tools are getting better with each passing day, as are our skills at manipulating those tools, but we as a society are growing less and less able to grasp reality. We are collectively getting dumber.

Today, tens of millions knowingly ignore truth and gleefully promote falsehood; willingly disposing of their ability to reason.

As individual Freemasons, we can fight these trends.

In our Lodges we can sit down together to discuss the ideas and ideals that underpin both our Ancient Craft and our Western Civilization. By doing so we can sharpen and expand our ability to think and reason. We can be reminded of the importance of civil discourse in a shared striving towards truth.

We can create blogs, and newsletters, and podcasts, and videos that portray Freemasonry in a good light, to counteract in some small way all those who lie about our institution and us as Masons. Related to that, we can do what we are able to support those of our Brothers who are doing that work.

What we can not do is adopt the lying tactics of our detractors. We can’t lie because it seems expedient. For doing so makes us no better than the anti-masonic propagandists.

Earlier this month I encountered photos of ‘Brother’ Chuck Norris in Masonic Officer garb all over social media. Posts lamenting the death of our ‘Brother.’ These posts were made and shared by probably thousands of Masons, hundreds of Lodges. I even saw one by a Regular Grand Lodge.

Chuck Norris was a great actor, but he was not a Freemason.

This idiocy was made up with the assistance of AI, by Masons, with the intent to deceive.

Why would we do that?

Are we no better than Ms. Owens with her made up stories about Freemasonic military hit squads?

We had better be if we hope for our children and grandchildren to live in a world that works to keep barbarism at bay. But if not even we as Masons value the truth, what is to stop the unreasoning from grasping and holding the reins of power?