“The society’s goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power”.
They seemed like good people.
Just a few lines below your quote on Wikipedia there is a possible answer:
During subsequent years, the group was generally vilified by conservative and religious critics who claimed that the Illuminati continued underground and were responsible for the French Revolution.
Elites being afraid of change that would threaten their power. So they make up propaganda to discredit their enemies.
I remember that some discordianists were experimenting with ways to kill off conspiracy theories. What they did was choose some obscure underground organization from the 18th century, create an intentionally silly conspiracy theory about it and sprinkle it randomly into Playboy magazines as well as novels and plays. It had quite unintended consequences as we can observe.
Sounds similar to how the modern flat earth conspiracy theory came to be
the illuminati of modern pop culture really has nothing to do with the actual group. any hatred people bare towards them is because of urban legends and modern conspiracy theories.
I’ve never met anyone who had opinions about 18th century clubs.
At least informed opinions. In places like Poland the carricatural stereotypes of mason conspiracies are alive and well. This is what you get when your dominant church never left the counterreformation period.
The same reason people hate socialists, communists, social justice advocates, landback/decolonisation proponents, vegans, radical environmentalists, etc etc etc. Propaganda, ignorance, and fear of change no matter how bad the status quo is.
