I think this is a fruitful interest and line of inquiry. DiFonzo's stuff on freemasonry is questionable. Freemasonry was endemic to the social use of leisure by the gentlemen of the eighteenth century. Almost everybody who was anybody was a freemason, so it can't be any surprise that the French and American Revolutions were led by masons.
The real question, of course, has to do with what kind of mason we're discussing, because the order was never uniform or united...save to those who willfully chose to ignore "fringe masonry." The American Revolutionaries, for example, were "Ancients" in opposition to the "Moderns" associated with the Grand Lodge in London and the traveling lodges of the British Army. French freemasonry was similarly fragmented, some clearly more middle class than others...less closely allied to the official governing bodies....and, consequently, more likely to be involved in revolution. Contrary to what DiFonzo says about "some historians" believing freemasons were behind the Russian Revolution, I don't think any creditable scholarly historian would believe such a groundless thing...though they may believe many other groundless things. This was an old reactionary charge, particularly associated with the right-wing Catholics and other groups traditionally rather hysterical about freemasonry as a secularist threat. That said, freemasonry has played a more important role in some of these Catholic countries, but here, too, the question is what kind of freemasonry...whether it's really an officially sanctioned kind of freemasonry or not. In terms of Italy, Garibaldi was certainly the real heir of the Carbonari (and the Sicilian peasant uprisings), and he was much identified with the Masonic order. However, Garibaldi was headed the Order of Memphis and Egyptian Rite masonry...which were repudiated by the official bodies in London and Paris as not real masonry...I'm not really sure that it ever established any relationship reestablished between this and the official bodies. The impression I have about Propaganda Due (9-2) is that it was a duly chartered lodge in the same sense as the lodge was among the London Police...the exposure of which caused such a horrific scandal some years ago.... In the same sense, P-2 may have had a charter from the Grande Oriente d'Italia, but it became a self-selecting group of men with common or interlocking interests who used their association through lodge for their own purposes. In other words, the freemasonry was incidental to their criminal conspiracies. But, from what I've read of them, I wouldn't doubt in the least that it's members were behind the mysterious and unexpected death of Pope John Paul I. ML
