Comment by null_deref
21 hours ago
It angers me that Fascist Italy could push the Mafia to the brink of extinction but Democratic Italy can’t.
21 hours ago
It angers me that Fascist Italy could push the Mafia to the brink of extinction but Democratic Italy can’t.
They pushed them out of Italy, which forced mafia to adapt in the US, eventually becoming richer and stronger. A much more powerful transnational mafia returned back to Italy.
by "they" do you mean Mussolini?
What exactly Leonardo Sciascia mean in his "Porte Aperte" is the fascism merely "anesthetize" the mafia rather than eradicating it (gaining temporary Sicilian consent through illusionary repression)
The purpose of democracy is to create stable governance with peaceful transitions of power, so that people feel confident about the future and are willing to invest in long term things that require long term stability. It's not because we think the plebiscite are really wise and effective at governing, they're not, but stability is more important and ultimately more humane than government which is truly effective but not stable in the long run.
Mafia exists because legal entities refuse to take responsibilities —- oh it’s too expensive to do X so we will leave it alone or legalize it. So eventually the underground takes over and Mafia becomes quasi governments.
To eradicate you need a stronger central government that is willing to send its probes into the deepest of the society and has a strong hand. Unfortunately this also has unforeseen consequences as well so is not everyone’s cup. Some societies prefer a stronger central government and some don’t.
Does it need to be centralized?
One Mafia pushed the other out. No improvement for normal people.
I don't doubt that a fascist regime can solve problems like organized crime effectively. This is because they don't need to care about human rights or the rule of law. The problem is that once the mob is gone, the fascists stay.
Did they? I’m pretty sure that’s just political propaganda of the regime.
I don't think they actually pushed the mob out, but evidently they did succeed in pissing off the mob enough to make the mob happy and willing collaborators with the Allies.
a couple of links about this
https://historycollection.com/the-mafias-secret-role-in-help...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborations_between_the_Uni...
I learned about it in the article.
> Under Mussolini, Moorehead argues convincingly, the Mob merely became dormant.
I did some googling and seems like this is a popular belief.
That’s just the state mafia replacing the other.
With Putin's Russia transition to authoritarian and recently becoming fully totalitarian, the Russian Mafia of 90s (with the 90s being the most democratic time in Russian history), is pretty much no more. FSB and police have replaced them in the protection and extortion domain. Thus nowdays an arrested colonel of FSB or police may easily have a couple cubic meters of money (euro and dollars) at home, to the envy of many mafioso around the world. Or Chechnja - instead of many smaller (and poorer and less organized) warlords of 90s, now there is only one with personal army of 40000 and exploiting the whole region in the style of the most cruel mafia.
How about America? And what about Trump?
America doesn’t have bribery! It has “lobbying”. This has been a problem long before Trump made it shameless.
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They can, they just don’t do it. This is the case in every western „liberal democracy“.
They just loooooove the campaign contributions.
Why does that anger you? Democracy is fundamentally unable to solve such issues.
Nearly every democratic country in the world is a counter example to this, what do you mean exactly?
Not true. Organized crime operates largely where people have money, i.e. in Europe, it's mostly UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden...etc.
12 replies →
Please elaborate I think there’re quite a few examples that contradict this