Gestapo

Gestapo (pronounced guh-stah-poh or guh-shtah-poh (German))

(1) A branch of German police under the Nazi regime (1933-1945) comprising various sections.

(2) A critical descriptor of any organ (usually) of a state which to some degree resembles Nazi Gestapo, especially in the brutal suppression of opposition (often initial lower-case).

(3) By extension, any oppressive force, group or tactic.

1933: An abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei)); literally “secret state police”.  Gestapo is a proper noun.

A typically German abbreviation

It’s an urban myth that Hugo Boss designed the uniforms of the Gestapo.  The field officers of force didn't wear uniforms and in that sense operated in the manner of police detectives while some administrative (district) staff wore much the same garb as their SS equivalents.  When operating in occupied territories under wartime conditions, Gestapo wore the same field grey as the SS with a few detail differences in the insignia.  Hugo Boss was one of a number of companies contracted to produce the uniforms of the SS (Schutzstaffel (literally "protection squadron" but translated variously as "protection squad", "security section" etc)).  The SS began (under different names) in 1923 as a party organization with fewer than a dozen members and was the Führer's personal bodyguard.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of "state within a state".  Of the SS, that's a more accurate description than of many of the apparatuses of the party and state but it was a feature of the Nazi period (not well-understood until after the war) that the internal dynamic was one of a permanent state of institutional struggle for dominance, reflecting Hitler's world view.  Post-war analysis by economists revealed the extent to which this system created structural inefficiencies.

The meme-makers found Hugo Boss's corporate history hard to resist.

The investigative & operational arms of Gestapo comprised the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; Security Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; Criminal Police), the final structural shape achieved in 1936 when Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) was granted control of all police forces in Germany, this having the general effect of formalizing the all forces branches of the Himmler’ apparatus.  It was a reward for Himmler’s role in the Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives), also called Unternehmen Kolbri (Operation Hummingbird), the bloody purge between 30 June-2 July 1934, when the regime carried out a number of extrajudicial executions, ostensibly to crush what was referred to as "the Röhm Putsch".  The administrative change was notable for marking the point at which control and enforcement of internal security passed from the state to the party, something reinforced in 1943 when Himmler was appointed Interior Minister.

The Gestapo was in 1946 declared a “criminal organization” by the international Military Tribunal (IMT) conducting the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) and although the idea of an organization being criminal seemed novel to many, there were precedents.  Under the Raj, the British India Act (1836) provided that if a man was proved to be a member of the Thuggee (the Thugs, a group of professional robbers and murderers who strangled their victims), regardless of whether his conduct disclosed any actual offence, he might receive a life sentence with hard labor and in laws were passed in the US declaring the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) criminal, a model used in 1919 by the state of California to outlaw “criminal syndication”.  Under Soviet law, someone could even be deemed a member of some organization, even if they didn’t actually belong to it, something of a Stalinist companion the crime of “unspecified offences”.  Germany too had “a bit of previous” in the approach, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) making it a crime to belong to any “anti-government secret organization”, in 1923 gazetting the Communist Party, the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) and the German People’s Freedom Party among the proscribed.

Remarkably (commented upon even at the time), the Orpo (Ordnungspolizei (Order Police, the “policemen” in the usual sense of the word)) and the Kripo weren’t included in the indictment on the basis they remain “civilian organizations”.  In the trial, the defense raised a number of technical points about the state of German law operative at the time the events being judged transpired and the court accepted some of these but anyway on 30 September 1946 ruled the Gestapo a criminal organization, thus implicating all members (excluding only some clerical & ancillary staff and those who had ceased to be employed prior to 1 December 1939.  In legal theory, this meant all operational SiPo staff active after 1 December 1939 could individually have been indicted in accordance with the available evidence and the expectation was that at least those most senior or accused of the more serious crimes would have faced trial.  However, there was no follow-up “Gestapo” trial, “punishment” limited to those Gestapo staff held in Allied internment camps, almost all of who were released after three years.  Although the Allied Control Commission (ACC) which administered occupied Germany allowed local courts to conduct trials, the number of Gestapo officers tried was comparatively low and even when convicted, the period spent in detention prior to trial was deducted from their sentence, a convention not extended to the seven sent to Spandau Prison after the main trial.  Only in first the Russian Zone (and later as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)) were many Gestapo officers charged and sentenced, almost all released after 1957.

For the majority, like many Germans they were subject to the “denazification” process, the prize of which was to gain a “Certificate of Exoneration”, a piece of paper which appealed to the famously sardonic Berlin sense of humor, soon dubbed the Persilschein (Percil Certificate), an allusion to the popular washing detergent which promised to make clothes “whiter than white”.  Most Gestapo staff received a Persilschein and many either resumed their employment in the new German state and ultimately were credited for pension purposes with their service during the Nazi years.

Politicians often reference the Nazis when attaching their opponents and "Gestapo" is a popular slur. 

Even before World War II (1939-1945) began, the word "Gestapo" had entered the English language as a synecdoche for “police state tactics” and it was in this sense Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on 4 June 1945 used the word in a broadcast for the UK general election, warning a Labour government (“the socialists” as he called them) would inevitably create such an apparatus to enforce the myriad of regulations and controls they were proposing:

“….there can be no doubt that socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state. …liberty, in all its forms is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism. …there is to be one state to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This state is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the arch-caucus boss.

A socialist state once thoroughly completed in all its details and aspects… could not afford opposition.  Socialism is, in its essence, an attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils.

But I will go farther.  I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart that no socialist system can be established without a political police.  Many of those who are advocating socialism or voting socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them.

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent.  They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.  And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.  And where would the ordinary simple folk — the common people, as they like to call them in America — where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?”

Essex man: Clement Attlee at home, mowing the lawn, Stanmore, Essex 19 April 1945.

It was a controversial statement and even many of Churchill’s Conservative Party colleagues distanced themselves from the sentiments.  The man being accused of planning this police state was Clement Attlee (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) who had served as Churchill’s deputy in the National Government (1940-1945) and was one of history’s more improbable figures to be painted an incipient totalitarian.  The electorate wasn’t persuaded and in the 1945 election Labour won a huge majority of seats in what is described as a “landslide” although the numbers are distorted by the UK’s “first-past-the-post” system; Labour gathered well under half the votes cast but that pattern has subsequently been typical of UK elections and in 1951 the Conservatives actually returned to office despite Labour out-polling them.  Attlee had responded to Churchill’s speech the next day:

“The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials.  I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others.  There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day.  I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair.  There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases.  For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual.  It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor.  Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the state, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners. The Conservative Party remains as always a class party.  In twenty-three years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the ranks of the wage earners.  It represents today, as in the past, the forces of property and privilege.  The Labour Party is, in fact, the one party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national life.”

Fedora

Fedora (pronounced fi-dawr-uh or fed-dohr-uh)

A soft felt or velvet hat with a curled medium-brim, usually with a band and worn with the crown creased lengthwise.

1887: An invention of American English, from Fédora, an 1882 play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), the protagonist of which was the Russian princess Fédora Romanoff, played originally by Sarah Bernhardt.  Bernhardt, a noted cross-dresser, wore a center-creased, soft brimmed hat which was adopted by feminists of the age, then known as women's-rights activists.  The name comes from the Russian Федо́ра (Fedóra), feminine form of Фёдор (Fjódor), from the Ancient Greek Θεόδωρος (Theódōros) (gift of god), derived from θεός (theós) (god) and δῶρον (dôron) (gift).  The ultimate root was the Indo-European dhes- (forming words for religious concepts) + dōron (gift) from do- (to give)).

In the Western world, between the demise of the top hat after the First World War and the abandonment of hats in the 1960s, three variations on a theme, the Fedora, the Trilby and the Homburg vied for choice as men’s headgear, all popular in a way the bowler hat never was.  Fedoras used to be made mostly from wool, cashmere, rabbit or beaver felt, some of the more expensive varieties blended with mink or chinchilla (and rarely mohair, vicuña, guanaco or cervelt).  After enjoying a 1990s revival, they came to be made from any available material, including modern synthetics.

The Trilby (left), Homburg (centre) and the Fedora (right).

The Fedora first became fashionable during the 1920s, displacing the less rakish Homburg (named after Homburg in Imperial-era Germany from where it originated as hunting headgear) although it was the similar, though narrow-brimmed, Trilby (also known in the UK as the “Brown Trilby”) which was said to be more popular with the rich.  The Trilby proved attractive to those often at the track, apparently because, with a narrow brim and one slightly turned up at the back, it made more convenient the carrying of a pair of binoculars.  The name Trilby was derived from a hat worn in the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's (1834-1896) 1894 novel Trilby.  Just another hat in most countries, it suffered by association in Germany because a black Trilby was the choice of most Gestapo officers.

Lindsay Lohan wearing Fedora with coat of unknown provenance, Chiltern Firehouse, London, 2014.

The Homburg did make a mid-century comeback after it became the choice of the UK's pre-war foreign secretary Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957).  The highly strung Eden was the most stylish politician of the age, although his sartorial elegance failed to impress the Duce, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) noting he had “…never met a better dressed fool.”  It was his colleague Rab Butler (1902–1982) who, noting the character of Eden's parents, reckoned genetics could explain why Eden was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman" and he understood that something as distinctive as a hat could convey a political message if the association was widely understood.  At the time when the great dividing line in British politics was the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940), Eden was replaced as foreign secretary by the pro-appeasement Lord Halifax (1881–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1938-1940), Butler becoming his under-secretary.  One thing an under-secretary gets allocated is a parliamentary private secretary (PPS), a member of parliament (MP) keen to stake a claim to advancement and on his first day in the Foreign Office (FO), Butler took the PPS to a quiet corner and told him to discard his homburg since it was "too Edenesque" and to "buy a bowler", the hat almost always worn by Halifax.  The PPS had no great regard for Eden and had adopted the homburg merely because he liked the look but anyway took the advice, delighted to be unexpectedly appointed a FO PPS, noting in his diary "...just think, bowlers are back".

Freemason

Freemason (pronounced free-mey-suh n)

(1) A member of a secret society (Free and Accepted Masons, constituted in London in 1717), present in many countries which operates in a cult-like manner (initial upper case and often used in the clipped form “Mason”).

(2) Historically, one of a class of skilled stoneworkers of the medieval period (lasting into the early modern era), possessing passwords and both public & secret signs, used as devices by which they could identify one another.

(3) A member of a society composed of such workers, which also included honorary members (accepted masons) not connected with stone work.

1350-1400: From the Middle English fremason.  Free was from the Middle English free, fre & freo, from the Old English frēo (free), from the Proto-West Germanic frī, from the Proto-Germanic frijaz (beloved, not in bondage), from the primitive Indo-European priHós (dear, beloved), from preyH- (to love, please); it was related to the English friend.  The verb was from the Middle English freen & freoȝen, from the Old English frēon & frēoġan (to free; make free), from the Proto-West Germanic frijōn, from the Proto-Germanic frijōną, from the primitive Indo-European preyH-.  Mason was from the Middle English masoun & machun, from the Anglo-Norman machun & masson or the Old French maçon, from the Late Latin maciō (carpenter, bricklayer), from the Frankish makjō (maker, builder), a derivative of the Frankish makōn (to work, build, make), from the primitive Indo-European mag- (to knead, mix, make), conflated with the Proto-West Germanic mattjō (cutter), from the primitive Indo-European metn- & met- (to cut).  The “mason” element of the word is uncontested.  A mason was a bricklayer (1) one whose trade was the handling, and formation of structures in stone or brick or (2) one who prepares stone for building purposes.  It later (3) became the standard short-form for a member of the fraternity of Freemasons.  However, the origin of the “free” part is contested.  Some etymologists suggest it was a corruption of the French frère (brother), from frèremaçon (brother mason) while others believe it was a reference to the masons working on “free-standing” (ie large rocks they would cut shape into smaller pieces) stones.  Most however maintain it meant “free” in the sense of them being independent of the control of local guilds or lords.  The noun freemasonry was in use by the mid-fifteenth century.  Freemason, Freemasonism & freemasonry are nouns and freemasonic is an adjective; the noun plural is Freemasons.  Unfortunately, the adjective freemasonistic and the adverb freemasonistically appear not to exist.

The origin of the freemasons was in a travelling guild of masons who wandered England offering their services to those needing stonework.  Operating in opposition to the established guilds, the freemasons (ie free from the dictates of the guilds) had a closed system of passwords, symbols and secret signs (the origin of the famously mysterious Masonic handshake) so safely they could identify each-other and ensure intruders (presumably agents of the guild) couldn’t infiltrate their midst.  In the early seventeenth century, they began accepting as honorary members even those who were not stonemasons and by the early eighteenth century the structure had had developed into the secret fraternity of affiliated lodges known as Free and Accepted Masons (often as F&AM) and as an institution the F&AM were first registered in London in 1717.

Freemason T-shirts should not be confused with other "Free" campaign clothing. 

The “accepted” refers to persons admitted to the society but not belonging to the craft and in time this became the nature of the Freemason, long removed from the actual trade of stone-working.  As an institution, the Freemasons (especially by their enemies and detractors) are often spoken of as if something monolithic but the only truly common thread is the name although most do (at least officially) subscribe to a creed of “brotherly love, faith, and charity”.  Structurally, they’re nothing like the Roman Catholic Church with its headquarters and single figure of ultimate authority and are a looser affiliation even than the “worldwide Anglican community” where the spiritual “authority” of the Archbishop of Canterbury is now wholly symbolic.  The Freemasons are more schismatic still and can’t even be compared to the loosest of confederations because their basic organizational units, the lodges, operate with such autonomy that one might not be on speaking terms with one in the next suburb and each may even deny that the other is legitimately Masonic.

Despite that, the conspiracy theorists have often been interested in the Masons because they can be treated as if they are monolithic and it is true that as recently as the second half of the twentieth century there were many entities (notably police forces) where there was an unusual preponderance of Masons in prominent positions and in one force, for decades, by mutual consent, the position of commissioner alternated between a Roman Catholic and a Freemason.  In Europe, it wasn’t uncommon for the Masons to be grouped with the Jews as the source of all that was corrupt in society and some satirists made a troupe of “the Freemasons and the Jews” being at the bottom of every evil scheme, cooked up either at lodge or synagogue.  One who needed no convincing was Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) who perceived a  Masonic plot be behind the overthrow of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) in 1943.

Reinhard Heydrich (second from left, back to camera) conducting a tour of the SS Freemasonry Museum, Berlin, 1935.

The Nazis enjoyed curiously diverse interactions with the Freemasons.  During his trial in Nuremberg in 1945-1946 Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) told the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that it was only an accident of history he was in the dock because in 1922 he was on his way “…to join the Freemasons when I was distracted by a toothy blonde.”  Had he joined the brotherhood he claimed, he’d never have been able to join the Nazi Party because it proscribed Freemasonry.  During the same proceedings, Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970; President of the German Central Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and Nazi Minister of Economics 1934–1937) said that even while serving the Third Reich he never deviated from his belief in the principles of “international Freemasonry”.  Upon coming to power, the Nazis certainly took that proscription seriously but the suppression of Freemasonry was not unique, the party looking to stamp out all institutions which could be an alternative source of people’s allegiances or sources of ideas.  This included youth organizations, trade unions and other associations, their attitude something like that of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to the Falun Gong and the two authoritarian parties were similarly pragmatic in dealing with the mainstream churches which were regulated and controlled, it being realized their support was such that eradication would have to wait.  By 1935, the Nazis considered the “Freemason problem” solved and the SS even created a “Freemason Museum” on Berlin’s Prinz-Albrecht-Palais (conveniently close to Gestapo headquarters) to exhibit the relics of the “vanished cult”.  SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant-General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) originally included the Freemasons on his list of archenemies of National Socialism which, like Bolshevism, he considered an internationalist, anti-fascist Zweckorganisation (expedient organization) of Jewry.  According to Heydrich, Masonic lodges were under Jewish control and while appearing to organize social life “…in a seemingly harmless way, were actually instrumentalizing people for the purposes of Jewry”.

One institution which has for almost three centuries proscribed Freemasonry is the Roman Catholic Church although that official position has run in parallel with a notable Catholic membership in many lodges.  The ban was both explicit and often expressed up until the pontificate of Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) but after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962-1965), the winds of change seemed to blow in other directions and in recent years from Rome, there’s been barely a mention of Freemasonry, the feeling probably that issues like secularism, abortion, homosexuality, radical Islam and such were thought more immediate threats.  It was thus a surprise to many when on 13 November 2023 the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (the DDF, the latest name for the Inquisition) reaffirmed the Church's teachings that laity or clerics participating in Freemasonry are in "a state of grave sin."  The DDF didn’t repeat the words of Clement XII (1652–1740; pope 1730-1740) who in 1738 called Masonry “depraved and perverted” but did say: “On the doctrinal level, it should be remembered that active membership in Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is forbidden because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry", citing Declaration on Masonic Associations (1983) by Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was head of the DDF (then called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)).  Continuing in a way which recalled the ways of the Inquisition, ominously the DDF added: “Therefore, those who are formally and knowingly enrolled in Masonic Lodges and have embraced Masonic principles fall under the provisions in the above-mentioned Declaration. These measures also apply to any clerics enrolled in Freemasonry.”

Apparently, the DDF issued the document in response to concerns raised by a bishop in the Philippines who reported a growing interest in the secret society in his country.  That was interesting in that cultural anthropologists have noted the form of Catholic worship in the Philippines was in some ways a hybrid which merged the Western tradition with the local rituals the Spanish priests who accompanied the colonists found were hard to suppress.  It proved a happy compromise and the faith flourished but one of the Vatican’s objections to Freemasonry has long been that the society swears oaths of secrecy, fellowship and fraternity among members and has accumulated a vast catalogue of rituals, ceremonial attire and secret signals.  It has always made the church uneasy that these aesthetic affectations often use Christian imagery despite being used for non-Christian rituals.  Indeed, it’s not a requirement of membership that one be a Christian or even to affirm a belief in the God of Christianity or Jesus Christ as the savior or mankind and the secret nature of so much Masonic ritualism has given rise to the suspicion of the worship of false idols.  Of relevance too is the existence of the complex hierarchy of titles within Masonism which could be interpreted as a kind or parallel priesthood.

Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) is fighting a war which he hopes will set the course of the church for the next generation.  Before it could commence in anger he had to wait for the death of Benedict but the battle is now on and it’s against a cabal of recalcitrant cardinals and theologians (“the finest minds of the thirteenth century” he’s rumored to call them) who are appalled at any deviation from established orthodoxy in doctrine, ritual or form, regarding such (at least between themselves), as heresy.  Quite where the DDF’s re-statement of the 300 year old policy of prohibition of Freemasonry fits into that internecine squabble isn’t clear and it may be the interest aroused surprised even the DDF which may simply have been issuing a routine authoritative clarification in response to a bishop’s request.  Certainly nothing appears to have changed in terms of the consequences and the interpretation by some that the revisions to canon law made some years were in some way substantive in this matter appear to have been wrong.

Escutcheons of the Holy See (left) and the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or (right).

Interestingly, the DDF (nor any other iteration of the Inquisition) has never moved to proscribe the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or (The Golden Keys; the international association of hotel concierges.  This is despite the organization being structurally remarkably similar to the Freemasons and the similarities between their escutcheon and that of the Holy See are quite striking.  According to the DDF, the crossed keys are a symbol of the Papacy's authority and power, the keys representing the "keys of heaven" that were in the New Testament passed from Jesus Christ to Saint Peter.  In Roman Catholic tradition, Peter was appointed by Jesus as the first Pope and given the keys to symbolize his authority to forgive sins and to make decisions binding on behalf of the Church (this the theological basis of what in canon law was codified in the nineteenth century as papal infallibility).  The two keys thus symbolize the pope's two powers: (1) spiritual power (represented by the silver key) and (2) temporal power (represented by the gold key).  The latter power manifested in a most temporal manner during the thousand-odd years (between the eighth & nineteenth centuries) when the authority of the papal absolute theocracy extended to rule and govern the Papal States (which were interpolated into the modern state of Italy upon Italian unification (1859-1870).  Claiming (officially) only temporal dominion, the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d'Or logo depicts both their keys in gold, one said to symbolize the concierge's role in unlocking the doors to the world for their guests, the other their ability to unlock the secrets of their destination and provide insider knowledge and recommendations (restaurant bookings, airport transfers, personal service workers of all types etc).  However, neither the Vatican nor the Les Clefs d’Or have ever denied intelligence-sharing, covert operations, common rituals or other links.

In an indication they'll stop at nothing, the Freemasons have even stalked Lindsay Lohan.  In 2011, Ms Lohan was granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan, the order issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a PhD there for someone.

The problem Ms Lohan identified has long been known.  In the US, between 1828-1838 there was an Anti-Mason political party which is remembered now as one of the first of the “third parties” which over the decades have often briefly flourished before either fading away or being absorbed into one side or the other of what has for centuries tended towards two-party stability.  Its initial strength was that it was obsessively a single-issue party which enabled it rapidly to gather support but that proved ultimately it’s weakness because it never adequately developed the broader policy platform which would have attracted a wider membership.  The party was formed in reaction to the disappearance (and presumed murder) of a former Mason who had turned dissident and become a most acerbic critic and the suspicion arose that the Masonic establishment had arranged his killing to silence his voice.  They attracted much support, including from many church leaders who had long been suspicious of Freemasonry and were not convinced the organization was anything but anti-Christian.  Because the Masons were secretive and conducted their meetings in private, their opponents tended to invent stories about the rituals and ceremonies (stuff with goats often mentioned) and the myths grew.  The myths were clearly enough to secure some electoral success and the Anti-Masons even ran William Wirt (1772-1834 and still the nation’s longest-serving attorney-general (1817-1829)) as their candidate in the 1832 presidential election where he won 7.8% of the popular vote and carried Vermont, a reasonable achievement for a third-party candidate.  Ultimately though, that proved the electoral high-water mark and most of its members thereafter were absorbed by the embryonic Whig Party.

Radar

Radar (pronounced rey-dahr)

(1) In electronics, a device for determining the presence and location of an object by measuring the time for the echo of a radio wave to return from it and the direction from which it returns (originally the acronym RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging)).

(2) Collectively, the hardware & software used in such systems.

(3) Figuratively, a means or sense of awareness or perception:

1940–1945: An acronym (RADAR: RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging)), coined in the US and entering English as a word within years.  Specialized forms are created as needed (radar gun, radar zone, radar tower, radar trap et al) Radar is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is radars.

Although it wouldn’t be known as radar for a few years, the system first became well known (within a small community on both sides of the English Channel) in 1940 because the string of radar installations along the English coast played such a significant role in the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) defense during the Battle of Britain, the air-war fought that summer.  What the radar did was to provide sufficient notice of an attack to enable RAF Fighter Command to react to threats in the right place at the right time (altitude was always a problem to assess) by “scrambling” squadrons of aircraft on stand-by rather than having to maintain constant patrols in the sky, something which rapidly would have diminished resources.

RAF radar towers on the channel coast, 1940.

There was some criticism that after some early attacks on the radar installations, the Luftwaffe didn’t persist, much to their disadvantage as it transpired.  In fact, the early attacks were successful and for periods, the ground controllers substantially were “blind” but the Germans could only attack what they could see and this was the masts and wires along the coast, easily and quickly able to be repaired.  The Germans knew what the radar was doing and suspected the advantage it offered the defenders but because their early attacks on the towers and wires, although clearly destructive, appeared to do little to diminish the RAF’s ability to respond, they switched to other targets.  The towers and wires were actually just a part of a system, much of which was underground, and it was the connectivity between the controllers receiving & interpreting the radar data, the sector stations and the fighter squadrons which made the RAF so effective.  Technically, the way the British implemented radar was an inefficient "brute-force" approach but it worked well and was able to be built and repaired quickly.  RAF was also an interesting example of how acronyms are adapted for use.  The British traditionally sounded RAF as the letters R-A-F rather than “raff” but when the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was formed, they adopted the form “raff”, presumably as a point of differentiation and, the Australians being never fond of wasted effort, something like “R-double-A-F” would have been a bit much.

Although some have tried to be prescriptive about forms of use and for centuries others have published style guides and books of “rules”, English tends still to evolve organically and words, “rules” and conventions come and go; only the strong survive in this laboratory of linguistic Darwinism.  The transition of an acronym to a recognized "word" is an example of some of the processes involved and although the proliferation of acronyms is certainly a recent phenomenon, they’ve actually be around at least since Antiquity, their initial attractions being they saved space on the expensive material on which stuff was written, they meant a scribe or scholar saved time (some paid by the hour or even the characters used) and generally, they made texts easier to read.  However, in the West, it was during World War I (1914-1918) that the growth in the number of acronyms really began, the military taking to them with a glee which soon infected the rest of government.

Etymologists note the trend of construction beginning early in the twentieth century before the great spike during the Great War but the word acronym seems not to have entered English until 1943.  It was borrowed from the circa 1902 German Akronym, from the Ancient Greek ἄκρον (ákron) (end, peak) & ὄνυμα (ónuma) (name), the construct being acro- (high; beginning) +‎ -(o)nym (name) and modeled after two other German nouns from semantics “homonym” (word with the same sound and spelling as another but different meaning) & Synonym (a word with the same meaning as another word).  For most of us, whatever looks like an acronym is an acronym among the specialists for who structural linguistics is a profession, a calling or an obsession (there’s often overlap), there are distinctions.  They will insist that an acronym is a construction which is always sounded as a word (eg UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization which is pronounced yoo-nes-koh) whereas one (certainly since the mid 1950s) where the letters are sounded as letters (eg BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation which is pronounced bee-bee-see) is an initialism.  Initialism actually had its own history: in mid-nineteenth century academic publishing it was used in the sense of “group of initial letters of an author's name (rather than the full name) atop a published paper” and an earlier term for what is now known as an initialism “alphabetic abbreviation”, dating from 1907.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover or Radar magazine, June-July 2007.  The last print-edition of Radar was in 2008; since 2009 it's been released on-line. 

For most folk their handling of such things has little to do with the structural distinctions but is more pragmatic and based on linguistic convenience and administrative convenience.  When typing, www makes more sense than “world wide web” yet in speech the full version is an economic three syllables, unlike the acronym which takes a time-consuming nine and is thus rare.  In the 1990s, “dub-dub-dub” was suggested as an alternative but it never caught on.  There are also situations where an acronym may be a homophone of another word so while ETA (the acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty), the armed left-wing separatist organization in Spain’s Basque Country) was pronounced etta, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (an armed secessionist movement of Bougainvilleans seeking independence from Papua New Guinea (PNG)) enjoyed the acronym BRA but it was never spoken as brah but always B-R-A.  So, the constructions which most regard as acronyms (or variations of the breed) consists of eleven types:

(1) Pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters (eg TIFF: True Image File Format; pronounced tif), (2) Pronounced as a word, the construct a mix of initial and non-initial letters (eg Radar: RA(dio)D(etecting)A(nd)R(anging); pronounced ray-dar), (3) Pronounced as a mix of letters and a word (eg JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group; pronounced jay-peg (although the variation jay-pee-gee is widespread because the file-name format used by CP/M in the 1970s and PC/MS-DOS in the 1980s in which file names used a string of up to eight characters, followed by a period, followed by an type-identifying file-name extension of up to three characters meant JPEGs were named filename.jpg), (4) Pronounced as a string of letters (eg BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation; pronounced bee-bee-see), (5) Pronounced as a string of letters, but with an interpolated verbal shortcut (eg National Health & Medical Research Council: NH&MRC; pronounced enn-aitch-and-emm-are-see), (6) A Shortcut incorporated into a name (eg SCO: the Santa Cruz Operation; pronounced sko) (7) The mnemonic (eg KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid; pronounced kiss), (8) The self-referential (eg TLA: Three Letter Acronym; pronounced tee-elle-eh), (9) The interpolated acronym (eg GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program; pronounced gimp), (10) Pseudo-acronyms (eg K9: pronounced key-nahyn (ie canine) which when sounded invoke a word or phrase (thus technically gramograms) and (11) The dreaded internally redundant acronym where a word (usually the last) is duplicated (eg ATM: Automated Teller Machine which is often used as ATM Machine.

The ATM machine might be OK if ATM had become a word (a la radar) but it never did.  Why some acronyms enter English as genuine stand-alone words while others never do is influence by a number of things but there are certainly no defined rules:

(1) Frequency of Use: If an acronym is used widely and frequently it can come to be accepted as a word: Thus, while NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics never reached critical mass, it’s successor organization NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) certainly did.

(2) Ease of use: The effortlessness with something rolls off the tongue will influence acceptance.  Radar and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) both benefited from this but sometimes an acronym’s creators may have wished they’d thought of something less amenable: In 1972, Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) campaign staff created the "Committee to Re-elect the President" which they abbreviated to CRP but the (usually hostile) press of course prefered CREEP and that's how it's remembered.  As it turned out, the journalists were right; in addition to fund-raising, printing flyers and producing bumper stickers, CREEP also engaged in back-channel deals and dirty-tricks operations.

(3) Portability: If an acronym is used in ways other than for the original purpose, it’s more likely to become a word.  Radar came to be used in many figurative ways and even spawned the imaginative “gaydar” (a portmanteau word, a blend of gay + (ra)dar, a colloquialism describing an individual’s (deductive or intuitive) ability to identify another as gay when it’s not immediately obvious through visual or other clues.

(4) Lexical Adaptation: The more an acronym can be adapted to fit standard grammatical rules, the more quickly it might be accepted as a word; laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) & radar both quickly came into use as nouns.

(5) Duration of use: The longer an acronym is in use, the more likely it will become ingrained in the lexicon.  Of course notoriety can transcend time: The Nazi Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)) existed for barely a dozen years but remains so notorious it’s part of language, used especially in political discourse when critiquing the powers of the state.

(6) The lexicographical imprimatur: If the editors of dictionaries accept a word and grant it an entry, there’s probably no more significant step for an acronym on the way to word-hood.  Of course, an entry in an established publication (preferably one with at least a history of print editions) suggests legitimacy in a way that on-line versions curated by users may not but English in such matters also works by acclamation and it may be some acronyms which became words really did first appear in the very often helpful Urban Dictionary.

Mason

Mason (pronounced mey-suhn)

(1) A person whose trade is building with units of various natural or artificial mineral products, as stones, bricks, cinder blocks, or tiles, usually with the use of mortar or cement as a bonding agent.

(2) A person who dresses stones or bricks.

(3) A clipping of Freemason (should always use an initial capital but frequently mason and variations in this context (masonry, masonism etc) appear; a member of the fraternity of Freemasons.

(4) To construct of or strengthen with masonry.

1175–1225: From the Middle English masoun & machun (mason), from the Anglo-Norman machun & masson, from the Old French masson & maçon (machun in the Old North French), from the Late Latin maciō (carpenter, bricklayer), from the Frankish makjon & makjō (maker, builder; to make (which may have some link with the Old English macian (to make)) from makōn (to work, build, make), from the primitive Indo-European mag- (to knead, mix, make), conflated with the Proto-West Germanic mattijō (cutter), from the primitive Indo-European metn- or met- (to cut).  Etymologists note there may have been some influence from another Germanic source such as the Old High German steinmezzo (stone mason (the Modern German Steinmetz has a second element related to mahhon (to make)), from the primitive Indo-European root mag-.  There’s also the theory of some link with the seventh century Medieval Latin machio & matio, thought derived from machina, source of the modern English machine and the medieval word might be from the root of Latin maceria (wall).    From the early twelfth century it was used as a surname, one of a number based on occupations (Smith, Wright, Carter etc) and the now-familiar use to denote “a member of the fraternity of freemasons” was first recorded in Anglo-French in the early fifteenth century Mason is a noun & verb, masonry & masonism are nouns, masoning is a verb, masoned is an adjective & verb and masonic is an adjective; the noun plural is masons.

The noun masonry was from the mid-fourteenth century masonrie, (stonework, a construction of dressed or fitted stones) and within decades it was used to describe the “art or occupation of a mason”.  It was from the fourteenth century Old French maçonerie from maçon.  The adjective Masonic was adopted in the 1767 in the sense of “of or pertaining to the fraternity of freemasons” and although it was early in the nineteenth century used to mean “of or pertaining to stone masons”, that remained rare, presumably because of the potential for confusion; not all stonemasons would have wished to have been thought part of the order.  The stonemason seems first to have been used in 1733.  An earlier name for the occupation was the fifteenth century hard-hewer while stone-cutter was from the 1530s (in the Old English there was stanwyrhta (stone-wright).  The US television cartoon series The Simpsons parodied the Freemasons in well-received episode called Homer the Great (1995) in which the plotline revolved around a secret society called the “Stonecutters”.  Dating from 1926, Masonite was a proprietary name of a type of fiberboard made originally by the Mason Fibre Company of Mississippi, named after William H. Mason (1877-1940 and a protégé of Thomas Edison (1847-1931) who patented the production process of making it.  In 1840, the word enjoyed a brief currency in the field of mineralogy to describe a type of chloritoid (a mixed iron, magnesium and manganese silicate mineral of metamorphic origin), the name honoring collector Owen Mason from Rhode Island who first brought the mineral to the attention of geologists.

The Mason jar was patented in 1858 by New York-based tinsmith John Landis Mason (1832–1902); it was a molded glass jar with an airtight screw lid which proved idea for the storage of preserves (usually fruits or vegetables), a popular practice by domestic cooks who, in season, would purchase produce in bulk and preserve it using high temperature water mixed with salt, sugar or vinegar.  The jars were in mass-production by the mid-1860s and later the jars (optimized in size to suit the quantity of preserved food a family would consume in one meal) proved equally suited to the storage and distribution of moonshine (unlawfully distilled spirits).  Much moonshine was distributed in large containers (the wholesale level) but the small mason jars were a popular form because it meant it could be sold in smaller quantities (the retail level) to those with the same thirst but less cash.

A mason jar (left), Mason jar with pouring spout (centre) and mason jar with handle (right).

For neophytes, the classic mason jar can be difficult to handle either to drink from or to pour the contents into a glass.  Modern moonshine distillers have however stuck to the age-old jar because it’s part of the tradition and customers do seem to like purchasing their (now lawful) spirits in one.  South of the Mason-Dixon Line, “passing the jar” is part of the ritual of the shared moonshine experience and, being easily re-sealable, it’s a practical form of packaging.  To make things easier still, lids with pourers are available (which true barbarians put straight to their lips, regarding a glass as effete) and there are also mason jars with handles.

The Mason-Dixon Line and the Missouri Compromise Line.  

The Mason-Dixon Line was named after English astronomers Charles Mason (1728–1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779) who between 1763-1767 surveyed the disputed boundary between the colonial holdings of the Penns (Pennsylvania) and the Calverts (Maryland), one of the many boarders (New South Wales & Victoria in Australia, Kashmir in the sub-continent of South Asia et al) in the British Empire which were ambiguously described (or not drawn at all) which would be the source of squabbles, sometimes for a century or more.  The line would probably by history have little been noted had it not in 1804 become the boundary between "free" and "slave" states after 1804, New Jersey (the last slaveholding state north of the line) passed an act of abolition.  In popular use “south of the Mason-Dixon Line” thus became the term used to refer to “the South” where until the US Civil War (1861-1865) slave-holding prevailed although, in a narrow technical sense, the line created by the Missouri Compromise (1820) more accurately reflected the political and social divisions.

A mason’s mark etched into a stone (left) and and image created from one of the registers of mason’s marks (right).

A mason's mark is literally a mark etched into a stone by as mason and historically they existed in three forms (1) an identifying notch which could be used by those assembling a structure as a kind of pattern so they would know where one stone was to be placed in relation to another, (2) as an mark to identify the quarry from which the stone came (which might also indicate the type of rock or the quality but this was rare within the trade where there tended to be experts at every point in the product cycle) and (3) the unique identifying mark of the stonemason responsible for the finishing (rather in the manner of the way the engineer assembling engines in companies like Aston Martin or AMG stamp their names into the block).  With the masons, these were known also bankers’ marks because, when the payment was by means of piece-work (ie the payment was by physical measure of the stone provided rather than the time spent) the tally-master would physically measure the stones and pay according to the cubic volume.  Every mason, upon their admission to the guild would enter into a register their unique mark.

Reinhard Heydrich (second from left, back to camera) conducting a tour of the SS Freemasonry Museum, Berlin, 1935.

Freemasonry has always attracted suspicion and at times the opposition to them has been formalized.  As recently as the papacy of Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), membership of Freemasonry was proscribed for Roman Catholics, Pius disapproving of the sinister, secretive Masons about as much as he did of communists and homosexuals.  In that he was actually in agreement with the Nazis.  By 1935, the Nazis considered the “Freemason problem” solved and the SS even created a “Freemason Museum” on Berlin’s Prinz-Albrecht-Palais (conveniently close to Gestapo headquarters) to exhibit the relics of the “vanished cult”.  SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant-General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) originally included the Freemasons on his list of archenemies of National Socialism which, like Bolshevism, he considered an internationalist, anti-fascist Zweckorganisation (expedient organization) of Jewry.  According to Heydrich, Masonic lodges were under Jewish control and while appearing to organize social life “…in a seemingly harmless way, were actually instrumentalizing people for the purposes of Jewry”.  That wasn’t the position of all the Nazis however.  Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945 and Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) revealed during the Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) that on the day he joined the party, he was actually on his way to join the Freemasons and was distracted from this only by a “toothy blonde” while during the same proceedings, Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970; President of the German Central Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and Nazi Minister of Economics 1934–1937) said that even while serving the Third Reich he never deviated from his belief in the principles of “international Freemasonry”.  It’s certainly a trans-national operation and the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or has never denied being a branch of the Freemasons.

In an indication they'll stop at nothing, the Freemasons have even stalked Lindsay Lohan.  In 2011, Ms Lohan was granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan, the order issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a PhD there for someone.

The problem Ms Lohan identified has long been known.  In the US, between 1828-1838 there was an Anti-Mason political party which is remembered now as one of the first of the “third parties” which over the decades have often briefly flourished before either fading away or being absorbed into one side or the other of what has for centuries tended towards two-party stability.  Its initial strength was that it was obsessively a single-issue party which enabled it rapidly to gather support but that proved ultimately it’s weakness because it never adequately developed the broader policy platform which would have attracted a wider membership.  The party was formed in reaction to the disappearance (and presumed murder) of a former Mason who had turned dissident and become a most acerbic critic and the suspicion arose that the Masonic establishment had arranged his killing to silence his voice.  They attracted much support, including from many church leaders who had long been suspicious of Freemasonry and were not convinced the organization was anything but anti-Christian.  Because the Masons were secretive and conducted their meetings in private, their opponents tended to invent stories about the rituals and ceremonies (stuff with goats often mentioned) and the myths grew.  The myths were clearly enough to secure some electoral success and the Anti-Masons even ran William Wirt (1772-1834 and still the nation’s longest-serving attorney-general (1817-1829)) as their candidate in the 1832 presidential election where he won 7.8% of the popular vote and carried Vermont, a reasonable achievement for a third-party candidate.  Ultimately though, that proved the electoral high-water mark and most of its members thereafter were absorbed by the embryonic Whig Party.