Foundation
"Propaganda" was originally 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 from the Piedmont nobility. The name was changed to "Propaganda Due" following World War II, when the Grand Orient of Italy numbered its lodges. By the 1960s, however, the lodge was all but moribund, holding few meetings. This original lodge, however, had little to do with the one Licio Gelli established in 1966, two years after becoming a freemason.
Masonry in Italy had been outlawed by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, but it was reborn after the Second World War under USA encouragement. However, its traditions of free thinking under the Risorgimento morphed into a fervent anti-communism. The increasing influence of the left at the end of the 1960s had the Masons of Italy deeply worried. In 1971, Grand Master Lino Salvini of the Grand Orient of Italy—one of Italy's largest Masonic lodges—assigned to Gelli the task of reorganizing the lodge.
Gelli took a list of "sleeping members"—members who were not invited to take part in masonic rituals anymore, as Italian freemasonry was under close scrutiny by the Christian Democrats in power. From these initial connections, Gelli was able to extend his network throughout the echelons of the Italian establishment.
Read more about this topic: Propaganda Due
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)