I usually avoid hot topics like the plague.
But I've been asked about mafia by people outside Italy, and I know they're curious.
And other people aren't curious, but they should learn a bit about it, especially before voicing their opinions.
A THREAD ABOUT ITALIAN MAFIAS.

Without snark, for once, because I can't bring myself to make them funny.
Usual note: I'm no expert at all about this matter, unlike history it's not even really one of my interests.
But reading the news in Italy makes you learn about criminal organizations, willing or not.

Content warning for violence, torture, and death. Not in any detail though.
(my partner made a good thread more specifically about that: https://twitter.com/jackdaw_writes/status/1381663782649409541)

Let's start from the word mafia itself.
Its etimology is debated, but it became used at the very beginning of italian history to indicate the violent groups that pretty much controlled parts of Sicily, where the newborn italian state had no real authority.

As the sicialin mafia coalesced into a singular organization, it became "the" mafia.
Mafia also became the term for any such organization.
In italian, you can say "we fight all mafias", referring to them all, or just to mean an opaque system of power - "academia is a mafia."

But if you just say "the mafia", you refer tothe sicilian mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing").
It was for a long time the strongest and bloodiest of the italian criminal organizations, even if that's arguably no longer the case.

It's strange, to most italians, what some foreigners seem to associate with the mafia - style, fashion, loyalty.
It's not just wrong because mafia is a despicable, violent organization, but because it's *really not into fashion*.

Cosa Nostra is a very traditionalist organization, and its members are definitely not expected to look fashionable or stilish.
I mean, this was the boss of bossess (actual title) of the sicilian mafia:

As for the loyalty, the history of the mafias is a history of endless backstabbing, bloody infighting, and ruthless killing of innocents.
Killing innocent people is not just something they're willing to do, it's their *basic intimidation strategy*.

The one form of loyalty they've ever shown is against the state, and even that, is mostly fear of bloody reprisal against their families.

So if mafia isn't the fashionable crime group some people picture, what is it?
First, understand it's an old problem.
Older than Italy, actually.

Its history can't be easily traced, for obvious reasons. But in the last century or so before italian unification, the once prosperous kingdom of the Sicilies was barely a state at all.

With public authority completely inneffectual, most terrain still controlled by feudal nobles and wealthy commoners forming their own militias.
Those private armies, controlled by shifting webs of local strongmen, are probably the roots of the mafia.

With the italian conquest of Sicily, things didn't go better - there was no real state anymore, and the island became ruled by militias and sworn societies of local men, acting outside any law.
The mainland italian state had neither the will nor the power to do much about it.

Times changed a lot of course, but that's still the heart of the mafia.
A web of power that ensares chunks of the state, of local authorities, more and more of local economy, always ultimately backed by threat of extreme violence.

That's why it's so difficult, even with decades of sustained (if inconsistent) effort, to eradicate the mafia. Parts of the police, of the state, of the church, of society *are* the mafia.
Whatever money is spent to fight it tends to flow to its coffers.

Italian mafias spilled a lot of blood. from the eighties to 2000s, they killed *thousands* of people, both fighting the state and fighting each other.
Torture and gruesome deaths, including of children, were common.

Mafias are much less bloody now.
But that's partly because it *is* weaker (it is, especially the once extremely powerful sicilian mafia).
But mostly new generation of mafiosi realized fighting the state head on is pointless, and focused on economic control.

While the old style mafia (not in the least preferable) focused on power, especially local power, the newer version is all about money, and is much more international.
Selling drugs, protection rackets and human trafficking and money laundering are their big businesses.

How effective have they been?
The wealthiest - and likely now the most powerful - of the italian mafias, the calabrese 'ndrangheta, is extimated to rack up 50 billions per year and has ties to every continent.
It effectively controls the cocaine market for the whole europe.

Southern Italy lags far behind the north in economical development.
That's due to many reason, but the mafias - systematically extorting from businesses, leeching public money, and in general making longeterm development pretty much impossible, are a *large* factor.

That might seem a small crime compared to thousand of deaths.
But poverty and lack of prospects for millions of people in southern Italy - and also the terrible state of the public healthcare, consistenly leeched by mafias - kills as surely as guns.

Mafias feed on poverty and hopelessness, in mistrust toward the law, because they give them an endless supply of recruits, and make their money all the more powerful.
In turn, their action *causes* poverty and corruption, in a catastrophic feedback loop.

For being such a large problem, the mafias are conspicuosly absent in the public debate in Italy.
I'm pretty sure no political part made fighting the mafias a major point of their program in the last political elections.

There was a huge mafia trial in 2020 in Italy and even I read about it *on foreign media*.
These days, understand that most politicians and journalist have no realistic reason to directly fear the mafia.
It's just a topic we don't want to hear about.

It's not (probably) that governments are in the pocket of the mafia - that happens too, but mostly at the local level, and used to happen more in the past (former PM Berlusconi very, very likely had ties with the mafia)

But fighting the mafias is frustrating, immensely difficult, and not fashionable. It gives little immediate, electorally valuable result.
Since mafias no longer kill nearly as much as they used to, they can be ignored most of the time.
And still they survive, and fester.

In the past, the italian state both fought more energetically, and colluded more, with the mafia.
It's been proven in court that government officials and mafia representative met to negotiate in the 90s. Whether there was an actual truce agreement, it's hotly debated.

I'll close with a few words on the three major organization. Remember they're international organizations worth billions - it's worth remembering their names.

Cosa Nostra, "the" sicilian mafia, used to be the most powerful, due to its huge control of every part of society in Sicily, and because it was unified under a single leader. It's the organization that tried to fight the state openly in the 80s.

It was also the first to expand abroat. But after waves of defectors, coordinated action from the state, and grassroot movements weakened it compared to the XXth century.
Still, clan "control" of local economic activies and politics is a fact in Sicily.

(unforgettably, when the president of Sicily was *sentenced to five years of prison* for mafia connections, he celebrated with cannoli - it was so obvious he was a mafioso, he likely expected worse)

Camorra, the campanian mafia, is likely more recent, and grew really powerful after WWII.
It distinguished itself for its extremely bloody feuds and factional wars.
(in one case, a rocket launcher was found in an arsenal. Which might be common in the US, but REALLY not here)

Camorra tried to form a unified leadership like the mafia, but it tore itself apart repeatedly, and is still split into several faction.
Still, it's powerful and controls the local drug market locally.

'Ndrangheta, the calabrese criminal organization, is the most secretive of the three, and most likely the strongest and wealthiest these days.

It's strongly structured along family lines more than by sworn allegiance like the other two, and it managed to avoid both infighting and defectors on the scale of the other two.
It also managed much better to avoid mediatic and police attention, and it grew enormous.

It has huge control over the drug market in the whole europe, and has a strong presence pretty much all over the world, mostly dealing in narcotics.
To give an idea, I read an article about its attempts to infiltrate the *australian* government.

Since many people wonder: I've never had any direct experience with any of the mafias.
While their economical power and political influence reaches deep into northern Italy (and beyond it), their immediate presence and physical violence is mostly in the south.

(mostly, but *not* entirely. There have been 'Ndrangheta-related killings in my partner's town, near Milan. A splinter faction of the mafia briefly set up in veneto.)

Well, that was it. If you like gangster stories, that's fine. But remember that real life mafias, and all the more "the" namesake organization, have absolutely nothing romantic or noble.
They're bloody thugs which suck their whole society dry.

(mostly, but *not* entirely. There have been 'Ndrangheta-related killings in my partner's town, near Milan. A splinter faction of the mafia briefly set up in veneto.)

Well, that was it. If you like gangster stories, that's fine. But remember that real life mafias, and all the more "the" namesake organization, have absolutely nothing romantic or noble.
They're bloody thugs which suck their whole society dry.