Freemasonry and the mafia, what the Gotha trial taught us/The analysis of the British historian John Dickie

“The Gotha trial, which ended in the first instance in Reggio Calabria (and for which two years later, the reasons were released last August, ed.), is one of the most important trials against the 'Ndrangheta in recent times. It is important, in part, because it is intended to shed procedural light on one of the most controversial aspects of the history of the Mafia over the last forty years: the relationship between organized crime and Freemasonry ." This is supported by the British historian and academic, expert on Italy, John Dickie in an article published in "Domani" on 15 June 2022, of which we reproduce some excerpts, underlining how to date "the results of the investigations by the police and of the judiciary on the mafia-crime relationship had been disappointing" and citing as an emblematic case the 1992 investigation by the former Palmi prosecutor Agostino Cordova , archived by the GIP of Rome because, Dickie recalls in the article, "it refers more to "collective imagination" on Freemasonry than to concrete evidence". So much so that in 2021, Cordova will lose, the scholar points out, "a civil case initiated against the Grand Orient of Italy, which had defined the investigation as "a witch hunt that ended in a dead end"." .

Dickie then reconstructs the Gotha trial, "which represents the confluence of four separate investigations, starting from apparently more solid documentary bases, even if difficult to compose into a coherent framework" and proposes testimonies such as those of the Limbadi boss Pantaleone Mancuso, according to he declares : «The 'Ndrangheta no longer exists! …once upon a time… there was the 'Ndrangheta!… the 'Ndrangheta is part of Freemasonry!' Would Freemasonry control the 'Ndrangheta, then? Instead, the testimony of the former Grand Master of the Grand Orient, Giuliano Di Bernardo, proposes a diametrically opposite scenario: that is, a Freemasonry controlled by the 'Ndrangheta. According to what he was told by an important Calabrian freemason in the early 1990s, the 'Ndrangheta had infiltrated 28 out of 32 Calabrian lodges.

There are other worrying testimonies like these, but together they do not help to clarify the panorama, even when they come from justice collaborators deemed credible elsewhere. There has been a lot of talk about "deviant", "secret", "occult", or "covered" lodges, but with little indication of their actual functioning.

THE NEW DIRECTORY OF THE 'NDRANGHETA
In the end, the judges of the Gotha trial concluded (at least at first instance) that there is a new directorate of the 'Ndrangheta, a sort of apical business committee made up of "link subjects" between the world of the 'Ndrangheta and that of the institutions. A highly significant procedural result, therefore. But where did Freemasonry go? The judges' response, a response with which PM Giuseppe Lombardo does not disagree, is disappointing for the conspiracy theorists of the situation.

The new directory is called by two names by the few 'Ndrangheta members who know about it: "the Invisibles" (because most affiliates are not allowed to see them); or "freemasonry" (because the directory operates according to business logic). For the 'ndrangheta of the Gotha trial, therefore, freemasonry is a metaphor that has nothing to do with real freemasons and aprons. Above all, it has nothing to do with the major obediences, with the Grand Orient of Italy and the Grand Lodge of Italy. We can therefore see that the 'ndrangheta, like a large part of the rest of the Italian citizenry, has a vision of freemasonry based on clichés: that is, based on a vague memory of the P2 affair, it thinks that "freemasonry" is synonymous with "occult power ”, of “shady business network”.

Are all Freemasons innocent, then? I do not believe. Are all trials against Freemasonry destined to make the same mistake? This is the risk if magistrates, policemen, journalists and citizens do not become much better informed about the mysterious object "Freemasonry". If we all continue to talk about Freemasonry without distinction, as if it were a single uniformly corrupt world, and not instead a confusion of different groups, with very different intentions, among which it is necessary to distinguish the bad subjects from the many good citizens.

If we persist in our ignorance about the true meaning of the Masonic oaths, and if we continue to treat them as the sign of a kind of white-collar silence, thus legitimizing a presumption of collective guilt. If we leave without comment the many conspiracy idiocies in circulation, which attribute every historical event to obscure Masonic plots, from the French Revolution to the Unification of Italy, from the coming to power of fascism, to the fall of Mussolini, from the collapse of Soviet Union at the mafia massacres of '92. And if we get lost in the mists of hearsay that have always been lifted when talking about Freemasonry.

The Masonic world is a piece of society like any other. As such it has its specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to dealing with the risk of mafia and/or criminal activity. The history of Freemasonry has much to teach us about these aspects. The lodges in Italy today, as in many other contexts, are the product of a particular history in which profiteering is far from being the only factor at play.

It is in Italy that we find the deepest and most enduring tradition of conspiracy myths, a tradition that has its roots in the theocratic hostility of the Catholic Church towards Freemasonry. In Italy, Freemasonry, until its ban by fascism in 1925, was more politicized than elsewhere. In Italy, in the post-war period, Freemasonry had the specificity of having to survive in a society dominated by two political forces, the DC and the PCI, both heirs of very strong traditions of hostility towards the lodges. These are the basic coordinates of another specificity of Italian history, the P2, a lodge dedicated to right-wing profiteering and subversivism, which has done so much to establish a simplistic and misleading equivalence in our collective memory: P2 = freemasonry .5 August 2023

31 October 2023