I can't really provide much insight, but I was once contracted by a local Masonic lodge to install new windows. I had unsupervised access to pretty much any room that had a window in it, and I was even permitted to look around in the windowless chamber where they performed many of their rituals. They were actually pretty excited to show me around. I can't imagine that they would allow a perfect stranger into their secret lair if they really had anything to hide. But, ya know, take what I say with a pinch of salt as it's just one anecdote about one lodge in Nowhere, Ohio.

The Masons are secretive. Many very high level historic figures have been Masons. It's a good old boys club to get in you need to be sponsored by another Mason. You don't hear a lot about their accomplishments. And you would expect that a social group that contained many of the important men in history wouldn't just be sitting around doing nothing in secret.

Lots of important and influential people were members and used their private little club to conduct business and make plans. That planning and business got called “conspiracy” because it happened behind secretive closed doors and involved rituals even though that same planning and dealing continued on outside the Masons when the club was no longer as popular among the well heeled.

They never shook off the image of importance even though the club is nowhere near the numbers it used to be.

It's just a frat for grown men. College fraternities can be similarly secretive and try to appear "fancy", but at the end of the day it's all just dudes hanging out in a clubhouse.

Read up on their founding and history, they brought it upon themselves. They wanted to be the mysterious Boogeyman from their inception because the founders thought it would be cool and fun.

Because once upon a time, the lodges were where literal important historical figures worked out the details on their conspiracies.

In 1738 the Pope forbid all Catholics from joining a Masonic lodge (open to men of any religion, and secretive, no doubt to avoid Inquisition), and called them 'depraved and perverted' (unlike the Church, of course). No doubt the faithful kept the rumor-mills turning.

A secret fraternal order with invite-only membership?… perfect scapegoat by the real perpetrators of evils.

Because they control the British crown
and keep the metric system down.

They're a literal secret society. The secrecy leads to all sorts of wild rumors, which just get amplified, altered, and exaggerated over time until you've got Reptilian Illuminati trying to conquer the world through subliminal messages being broadcast through tooth fillings via fluoride in the water.

Because conspiracists are lazy. They can't even get past the flat earth stuff.

Because conspiracy theorists are idiots who can't or won't face the facts of reality.

Idk but as one there is no way a bunch slightly racist old white Christian men can organize anything beyond the local and maybe state level.

Masonry is really cool and used to be highly influential for all levels of society but it’s not that anymore. It’s really sad. My grandparents generations were joiners. After the war everyone joined a society. My parents joined some. But nowadays that’s very rare. Everyone in my lodge was 50-80.

I think the propaganda comes from a similar place of earlier Jesuit propaganda. A bunch of men meeting in secret, seeking education away from church and state, highly involved in the community. Now it’s just having meals, meetings, and planning which charity event to do.

From what I've come across, it's from a combination of their secrecy (historically to the point of death, read about ~~Hiram Abiff~~ William Morgan who was mobbed to death by Freemasons just North of where I used to live), their links to the upper class, their place in the spiritual sphere (they have Anglican/Templar associations, which is why the pope forbids joining, and these put their links to the British crown into perspective, as well as the fact they have their very own equivalent to the Vatican Secret Archives, which is a common theme, with the more gender-inclusive and Knights-Hospitaller-sprung Sovereign Military Order of Malta being their strictest rivals), their feud with what has come to be known as the LDS church (Joseph Smith was said to have been a Freemason who took off with their secret "ideas" to make the Book of Mormon), the fact they have historically looked down on those who leave or operate from other societies such as the Oddfellows, and some of their practices, such as the fact they used to be unwilling to testify against each other in court (I don't know if this is still true, but to put that into perspective, the United States recently reprimanded Scientology for the same reason), how "expensive" it is to actually be a member, their overlapping with what would today be called Gnosticism (oddly the G symbol does not stand for Gnosticism, though one cannot deny what comes across as some very sectarian observations/tendencies), and how it's 2025 and they still don't allow women to join (they also used to not allow people of color to join either, up until recently, and they still require someone to have a spiritual upbringing), which is why I am not one (I could join the Eastern Star, but it's almost knock-off-esque compared to the actual thing, which actually used to frown upon the Eastern Star as "missing the point", plus they wouldn't take kindly to my upbringing since my details would fall outside their range of knowledge).

In a way, it's comparable to how we might critique a British megachurch, if that megachurch was formatted like a university fraternity club. I had known many Freemasons, which is the norm where I used to live because there is a high enough Masonic presence in the area that they built the streets (arranging the sidewalk in a literal square and compass design), with family members of my friends participating in the group. I have nothing against them on their own, but with their sense of superiority and duty (especially with foreign entities involved) that often gets stereotypically mixed in with their demeanor, they can be as overbearing as sand here (coarse and rough and irritating and getting everywhere), which for a long time has not just led me to speculate myself but also forced my hand in a way. When you combine an obsolete sense of self with extreme exclusivity, well, there you go.

I am one if you want to AMA

Because they won't tell people what they do in their ceremonies. It's really not all that interesting, to be honest.