CONSPIRACY CLAIM #24

Riccardo Bosi is a former Australian Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who left the army in 2004. In October 2019 he founded a political movement called AustraliaOne. Despite years of promises and appeals to supporters for donations to fund it, AustraliaOne has never been registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, or with any state electoral commission, and it cannot appear on a ballot paper as a party.

Freemasonry is one of the targets of his movement. In a question-and-answer video for AustraliaOne, Mr Bosi was asked directly: “Why does AustraliaOne push so hard on divisive issues like full term abortion and the freemasons?” The claim attributed to him, and answered here, is that Freemasons are one and the same as the Illuminati and secretly run the world’s governments.

Who is making the claim?

It is fair to judge a claim on its merits, but it also helps to know its source. The Australian Associated Press has described Mr Bosi as a “serial misinformation spreader”, after he promoted claims that political parties are unconstitutional, that Ukraine is not a sovereign state, and that votes in the 2023 New South Wales election would be tampered with. An investigation by the independent news site The Klaxon in 2022 reported that he had made statements threatening to hang former prime ministers and High Court justices, and he has called for politicians, judges, doctors and journalists who supported what he calls the “COVID hoax” to be hanged. In February 2025 he told his online followers that it was a lie that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

He has been described as preaching a blend of QAnon and “sovereign citizen” beliefs. As we explained in Claim #16, the idea of a secret group running the world, whether it is called the cabal, the New World Order or the Illuminati, is the common thread in all of these movements, and Freemasons have been cast in that role since 1797.

Freemasons are the Illuminati?

No. The Bavarian Illuminati was a real society, founded in 1776 and banned in 1785, and there is no evidence that it survived. The claim that it lived on inside Freemasonry was invented in 1797 and has been repeated ever since without a shred of proof. Freemasonry is a public organisation with public headquarters, published rules and open days. It is not a front for the Illuminati, because there is no Illuminati to front for (see Claim #23).

Freemasons run all governments?

Freemasonry could not run a government even if it wanted to. There is no world headquarters and no world leader: every Grand Lodge is independent and sovereign, and they have no common political agenda. Individual Freemasons have always held political views from right across the spectrum. Above all, regular Freemasonry bans political discussion in the lodge altogether. The United Grand Lodge of England’s rules state that a Freemason may not, in any lodge or in his capacity as a Freemason, “discuss or … advance his views on theological or political questions”, and that the Grand Lodge “has always consistently refused to express any opinion on questions of foreign or domestic state policy”.

An organisation that refuses to take any political position, and forbids its members to talk politics at their meetings, is not secretly directing the governments of the world. Governments are run by elected politicians and public servants, who answer to parliaments, courts, the press and, at every election, the voters.

Conclusion: Freemasons are not the Illuminati, which ceased to exist in 1785, and they do not run any government. Freemasonry has no central authority, takes no political positions and bans political discussion in its lodges. The claim comes from a man described by the Australian Associated Press as a “serial misinformation spreader”, whose movement has never been registered as a political party, and who has called for his opponents to be hanged. It is false.