Propaganda 2

Propaganda 2 (P2) was a fascist secret society linked to the Golpe Borghese coup attempt a decade earlier. The organization was uncovered in 1981 after a membership list fell into police hands during the raid of a villa belonging to an Italian financier named Licio Gelli. The list of names included three cabinet ministers, two under secretaries, 30 members of parliament including the leader of the Social Democratic Party, 170 top military officers, the Foreign Ministry's highest-ranking diplomat, scores of high-ranking civil servants and public officials, magistrates, industrialists, university professors, policemen, and journalists, including the editor and publisher of Italy's most prestigious daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.¹

The most notable P2 member was future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was later prosecuted for hosting underage sex orgies at his palatial estate in 2010. In 1990, Berlusconi was declared guilty of false testimony over his membership of Propaganda 2, described as a "state within a state" counting among its members industrialists, politicians, military leaders, and journalists. Another member was Alessandro Moncini, a member of Italy's old money industrialist establishment in the seaport city of Trieste, Italy. In 1988, Moncini traveled to the United States to purchase a ten-year-old Mexican girl for a ritual similar to the one Pier Paolo Pasolini had explored in his film Salo.¹