← Back to the front page

A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

2. A Crackdown on Crime in Italy Helped Cement Organized Crime in America

Prohibition laid the groundwork for and produced a business boom for American organized crime. Just as that was getting started, Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy. No Italian government before or since had managed to crush the Sicilian mafia and the Camorra. Mussolini crushed them.

The Sicilian mafia and Camorra throve in Italy’s corrupt political culture, working the system and mastering its intricacies, subverting politicians, police, and judges by bribes or threats, until organized crime became a state within the state. The fascists did not share power or tolerate challenges, and Mussolini was neither concerned with nor constrained by legalities in dealing with Mafiosi. He simply bypassed the criminal justice system and sent in the army and Black Shirts to round up the Sicilian Mafia and Camorra en masse, killing any who resisted.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.