News item: \u201cJustice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society of elite hunters<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 12 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.<\/p>\n After Scalia\u2019s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia\u2019s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.<\/p>\n Members of the worldwide, male-only society wear dark-green robesemblazoned with a large cross and the motto \u201cDeum Diligite Animalia Diligentes,\u201d which means \u201cHonoring God by honoring His creatures,\u201d according to the group\u2019s website. Some hold titles, such as Grand Master, Prior and Knight Grand Officer. The Order\u2019s name is in honor of Hubert, the patron saint of hunters and fishermen.<\/p>\n \u2026 The society\u2019s U.S. chapter launched in 1966 at the famous Bohemian Club in San Francisco, which is associated with the all-male Bohemian Grove \u2014 one of the most well-known secret societies in the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> headline there is ambiguous, so let\u2019s clear up what that means. This is not a fraternity for \u201celite hunters\u201d \u2014 not a club that welcomes the most highly skilled hunters in the world. It is, rather, a fraternity for men who are economic elites and who also enjoy hunting.* It\u2019s a boys-only Davos with long guns.<\/p>\n The Davos example is, I think, the best way to understand groups like this, and to think about what\u2019s \u201csecret\u201d in such secret societies. Consider, for example, the Freemasons \u2014 who may be, oxymoronically, the best-known secret society. They meet in Masonic halls with big, public signs identifying them as such. And Masons themselves are not secretive about their membership in this secret society. They wear rings and often even get special license plates identifying them as members. They\u2019re on Facebook<\/em>. For members of a secret society, they\u2019re remarkably open about it.<\/p>\n But the Freemasons also meet privately, in gatherings closed off from the rest of the public. Those \u201csecret\u201d meetings don\u2019t strike most of us as nefarious because we know enough about similar gatherings of similar \u201csocieties\u201d to have a pretty good idea of what goes on in such club meetings. I\u2019ve been to Rotary luncheons with my dad. I\u2019ve had friends who coached Little League for the Elks Lodge. I myself spent several years as a member of the South Philly Fast-pitch Softball League. So the Masons don\u2019t worry me.<\/p>\n The Masons, though, are older and spookier than the Elks or the Rotarians. Those more recent middle-American civic clubs are not \u201csecret societies\u201d in the way the Freemasons are, with all the weird trappings and accoutrements of robes and Latin phrases and rumored rituals performed behind locked doors of which they may never speak outside. The forced pageantry of such rituals usually turns out to be rather silly or embarrassing (just ask David Cameron<\/a>), but the idea<\/em> of them is what gives secret societies their intriguing allure \u2014 both for members and for outsiders.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why we\u2019re fascinated by the weirder ritualistic details in this story about Scalia\u2019s membership in the pretentiously titled International Order of St. Hubertus \u2014 by what Anil Dash yesterday aptly referred to as the creepily \u201cEyes Wide Shut<\/em> s\u2013t\u201d in this story. (Bohemian Grove!<\/a><\/em>) This forced mysteriousness has long provided fodder for the fantasies of opponents of such secret societies, but it\u2019s a distraction from the real reasons we should be concerned about such groups.<\/p>\n Yes, the green-robed business is creepy and maybe makes you wonder if The Most Dangerous Game<\/a><\/em> wasn\u2019t actually a whistle-blowing memoir written to expose the initiation rite of its secretive leadership. But the truly creepy bit here doesn\u2019t have anything to do with whatever secret rituals or whatnot these men engage in during the LARPing portions of their gatherings. The creepy part is what we know because they tell us<\/em>: Some of the most powerful, wealthiest, whitest, Gentile males in the world regularly gather at luxury hunting lodges for a little bit of hunting and a whole lot of networking. This is one of the many unofficial channels through which they run the world.<\/p>\n These white men have a club and 99.99 percent of the world is not rich or powerful or white enough to belong to it. You will never be invited, or allowed, to join. Members of this club assist one another, promoting one another\u2019s interests and working together to quash any potential source of discomfort or misfortune. That\u2019s not the secret part, but that\u2019s the scary part.**<\/p>\n The scary part isn\u2019t a secretive conspiracy theory. The scary part is that the conspiracy isn\u2019t a secret.<\/p>\n Consider this: In 2004, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving an attempt to make public the documents of a government energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. This didn\u2019t involve any robes and rituals, but it did involve the Bush Administration arguing that its energy policy needed to be kept secret, and that the public had no right to know about the involvement of oil and coal companies in writing that policy. Three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case \u2014 Cheney vs. USDC for District of Columbia<\/a><\/em> \u2014 Dick Cheney went on a luxury hunting trip with fellow \u201celite hunter\u201d Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia refused to recuse himself from Cheney\u2019s case<\/a>, and eventually sided with the majority in favor of Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a secret conspiracy. It\u2019s just how they do things<\/a>. And it\u2019s how they ensure that this is how things will always be done.<\/p>\n![\"msteps1\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2016\/02\/msteps1-1024x677.jpg\")
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