Propaganda Due
italic=no was a Masonic lodge, founded in 1877, within the tradition of Continental Freemasonry and under the authority of Grand Orient of Italy. Its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976, and it was transformed by Worshipful Master Licio Gelli into an international, illegal, clandestine, anti-communist, anti-Soviet, anti-Marxist, and radical right criminal organization and secret society operating in contravention of Article 18 of the Constitution of Italy that banned all such secret associations. Gelli continued to operate the unaffiliated lodge from 1976 to 1984. P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries, including the collapse of the Holy See-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano, the contract killings of journalist Carmine Pecorelli and mobbed-up bank president Roberto Calvi, and political corruption cases within the nationwide mani pulite bribery scandal. P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire.
P2 was sometimes referred to as a "state within a state" or a "shadow government". The lodge had among its members prominent journalists, members of the Italian parliament, industrialists, and senior Italian military officers —including Silvio Berlusconi, who later became Prime Minister of Italy; the House of Savoy pretender to the Italian throne Prince Victor Emmanuel; and the heads of all three Italian foreign intelligence services. When searching Gelli's villa in 1982, police found a document which he had entitled "Plan for Democratic Rebirth", which called for a coup d'etat, the consolidation of the media, the suppression of Italian labour unions, and the rewriting of the Italian constitution.
Outside of Italy, P2 had many active lodges in Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Among its Argentine members were Raúl Alberto Lastiri, who was briefly interim president of the country after the end of the self-styled "Argentine Revolution" dictatorship ; Emilio Massera, who was part of the military junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla during Argentina's last civil-military dictatorship ; the Peronist orthodox José López Rega, who was Minister of Social Welfare and founder of the paramilitary organisation Argentine Anticommunist Alliance ; and former Argentine Army general, Dirty War perpetrator, and convicted murderer Guillermo Suárez Mason.
P2's leader, Gelli, has been recognized in the 2020s as the mastermind behind the 1980 Bologna massacre, the deadliest terrorist attack in post-WWII Italy.
Foundation
With the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, the Grand Orient of Italy, the most important and numerous Masonic community in Italy, felt the need to safeguard the identity of its most prominent members, even within the organisation. For this reason, the membership of the latter did not appear on any official list, but was known only to the Grand Master, who recorded it as an initiation "by ear". It was not until 1877 that began to draw up a list called Propaganda Massonica, officially establishing the lodge in question and becoming its first venerable master.Propaganda was founded in 1877, in Turin, as Propaganda Massonica. This lodge was frequented by politicians and government officials from across Italy who were unable to attend their own lodges and included prominent members of the Piedmont nobility. Since its foundation, the main feature of the lodge was to provide adequate cover and secrecy for the most important initiates, both inside and outside the Masonic organisation.
Adriano Lemmi was initiated into the Propaganda lodge in 1877 and helped to give it prestige by bringing together members of parliament, senators and bankers who, due to their positions, were forced to leave their local lodges and settle in Rome. During its history, the lodge included important Italian figures, such as the poet Giosuè Carducci, politicians Francesco Crispi and Arturo Labriola and journalist Gabriele Galantara.
Even after Lemmi's Grand Mastership, the lodge continued to be an important reference point in the organisation of the Masonic Grand Orient. Among its members, at the beginning of the 20th, century there were Giovanni Ameglio, Mario Cevolotto, Eugenio Chiesa, Alessandro Fortis, Gabriele Galantara, and Giorgio Pitacco.
Propaganda Massonica was banned in 1925, alongside all other Masonic lodges and secret societies, by the Fascist regime. The Grand Master signed the decree dissolving all lodges. However, Italian Freemasonry was reconstituted in exile in Paris on 12 January 1930.
Following the end of World War II, Freemasonry became legal again and the lodge was reformed. The name was changed to Propaganda Due when the Grand Orient of Italy numbered its lodges. By the 1960s, the lodge was all but inactive, holding few meetings. This original lodge was only tangentially related to the one established by Licio Gelli in 1966, two years after becoming a Freemason. On the contrary, Giuliano Di Bernardo, former Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, affirmed that "the cards of the P2 affiliates bore the signature of the Grand Master, therefore they were all effective members of the Grand Orient of Italy."
With the return of the Grand Orient to Italy, the lodge was reconstituted under the name 'Propaganda 2', for reasons of numbering of Italian lodges imposed by organisational necessity. The lodges resumed their activities, returning to the direct authority of the Grand Master of the Order until the advent of Licio Gelli. During the Cold War, Italian Freemasonry traditions of free-thinking under the Risorgimento transformed into fervent anti-communism. The increasing influence of the political left at the end of the 1960s became a concern to the Masons of Italy. Gelli was first appointed by Lino Salvini, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy—one of Italy's largest Masonic lodges, to represent him in all functions within the lodge, with task of reorganizing P2, then he was appointed Venerable Master, i.e. head in all respects.
Based on notes from the SISMI and SISDE discovered by magistrate Vincenzo Calia during his investigation into the death of Enrico Mattei, the P2 Lodge was allegedly founded by, who ran it until he became president of Montedison. After the, he was replaced by the duo Licio Gelli and Umberto Ortolani. According to other sources, the secret head of the P2 Lodge was former Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti.
Gelli was initiated into Freemasonry on 6 November 1963, at the "Gian Domenico Romagnosi" lodge in Rome. The Parliamentary Commission believes that Gelli had also gained influence in the "court" of Argentine General Juan Domingo Perón : he was subsequently affiliated with the Hod Lodge by Venerable Master Alberto Ascarelli and promoted to the rank of Master.
Subsequently, in the "Garibaldi – Pisacane di Ponza – Hod" lodge, Gelli began to introduce numerous prominent figures, earning the appreciation of his venerable Master, who introduced him to, Grand Master of the Order. Gelli convinced Gamberini to initiate new members "on the sword" and to include them in the list of "covered brothers" of the P2 lodge.
Gelli took a list of "dormant members", or members no longer invited to participate in Masonic rituals, as Italian Freemasonry was under close scrutiny by Christian Democracy in power through the Pentapartito. Through these initial connections, Gelli was able to extend his network throughout the echelons of the Italian establishment. In 1967, P2 initiated former SIFAR Brigadier-General Giovanni Allavena, who handed Gelli approximately 157,000 confidential files on many public persons, including intercepted telephone calls, photographs, correspondence, and private information.
Discovery
The activities of P2 were discovered by prosecutors while investigating banker Michele Sindona, the collapse of his bank and his ties to the Sicilian Mafia. In March 1981, police found a list of alleged members in Gelli's house in Arezzo. It contained 962 names, among which were important state officials, important politicians and a number of military officers, including the heads of the three Italian secret services. Future Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was on the list, although he had not yet entered politics at the time. Another famous member was Victor Emmanuel, the son of the last Italian king.Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani appointed a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, headed by the independent DC Tina Anselmi. In May 1981, Forlani was forced to resign due to the P2 scandal, causing the fall of the Italian government.
In January 1982, the P2 lodge was definitively disbanded by the Law 25 January 1982, no. 17. In July 1982, new documents were found hidden in the false bottom of a suitcase belonging to Gelli's daughter at Fiumicino airport in Rome. The documents were entitled Memorandum sulla situazione italiana and Piano di rinascita democratica, and are seen as the political programme of P2. According to these documents, the main enemies of Italy were the Italian Communist Party and the trade unions, particularly the Communist Italian General Confederation of Labour. These had to be isolated and cooperation with the PCI, the second biggest party in Italy and one of the largest in Europe, which was proposed in the Historic Compromise by Aldo Moro, needed to be disrupted.
Gelli's goal was to form a new political and economic elite to lead Italy away from the danger of Communist rule. More controversially, it sought to do this by means of an authoritarian form of democracy. P2 advocated a programme of extensive political corruption: "political parties, newspapers and trade unions can be the objects of possible solicitations which could take the form of economic-financial manoeuvres. The availability of sums not exceeding 30 to 40 billion lire would seem sufficient to allow carefully chosen men, acting in good faith, to conquer key positions necessary for overall control."