Mention such entities as the Freemasons, Ku Klux Klan or the Manson Family, and you’ll likely get a somewhat knowing response from the average person, but then try the Bohemian Club, Ordo Templi Orientis or the Triads and Tongs and the reaction transforms to a blank stare. One certain way to familiarize yourself with a wide swath of these cloak-and-dagger groups—and dispel their myriad associated myths—is to read David Luhrssen’s new book, Secret Societies and Clubs in American History (ABC-CLIO).
Lest we think that all such groups are comprised of head cases plotting to take over the world, Luhrssen reminds us that several such secret societies “were centers of power, when they were not the locus of resistance to power,” and that they span the gulf between the worlds of “philanthropy and community building” to “drug trafficking and terrorism.” As such, these societies and clubs reflect our human selves—our wanting to “belong,” to connect with our fellows and to find in that connectedness feelings of value, worthiness and security.
“In 20th-century America,” Luhrssen writes, “the Masons were a respectable social and charitable club, the Rotary with rituals.” The Masonic movement became so prevalent, in fact, that it caused the creation of the first “third party” in U.S. history—the Anti-Masonic Party, who saw Freemason secrecy as a threat to the republic. A group like Skull and Bones, far from consisting of fringy weirdoes, could boast such movers and shakers as John Kerry, George W. Bush, William F. Buckley Jr., and as Luhrssen explains, “numerous cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Supreme Court justices and financiers.” Likewise the Bohemian Club, with Richard Nixon and Chief Justice Earl Warren as members. Conspiracy buffs readily jump upon such information as proof positive of dark, hidden forces at work (in doing so, conveniently ignoring simple realities such as the fact that folks like Kerry and Bush couldn’t and wouldn’t conspire together for any purpose whatever).
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From the perceived threat to the country posed not only by an influx of Irish immigrants but their concomitant Catholicism arose the Know-Nothings. Responding to blatant acts of discrimination by such bigoted groups, the Molly Maguires “retributive justice” went from “knocking down fences to killing livestock or plowing up pastureland.” Meanwhile, the Knights of Labor arrived in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, beginning “as a secret society with trappings and rituals borrowed from Freemasonry but (growing) into an influential labor movement.”
Whatever good some of these groups may have done, the binding elements of secrecy, insularity, ritual and rite also played their part in wholly nefarious groups. Hence, the “distinct if sometimes overlapping secret societies” we’ve heard described as the Chinese Mafia—the Triads and Tongs. The Mafia shoe fits, Luhrssen explains. “Secrecy serves the ends of Triads and Mafia alike. Death has always been the penalty of betrayal.” In his equally disturbing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan, the author reminds us that the KKK was not always, as it appears to be today, “the butt of bad jokes” consisting of little more than “scattered, squabbling bands”; it once terrorized the American South and was not merely anti-Black, but also abhorred “Jews, Catholics and immigrants from eastern and southern Europe as well as Asia.”
The 20th century gave us the Aryan Nations, Christian Identity and mass-murdering domestic terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh. Most apropos, the book concludes with the absurd suicide cult that was Heaven’s Gate. The long view provides something of an arc: from mass political movements, memberships in the millions and from the country’s halls of power, we see the status of such groups devolve to a deranged cult leader and his minions.
The book’s strengths are its superb research, many useful illustrations, straightforward narrative, wide embrace and frequent tie-ins with cinema. Indeed, the latter are of particular note in terms of mythbusting and relevance: Viewing 1985’s Year of the Dragon , for example, will help bring the Triads to vivid life—at a safe distance—on the screen.
Search for Secret Societies and Clubs in American History on YouTube to watch Luhrssen discuss his book.
