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Historic Ideas That Aged Like Complete Garbage

Khalid Elhassan July 11, 2020 35 min

Madame Nhu - South Vietnam — Protests in Saigon. People's World

13. Creating the American Mafia

Detroit gangsters during Prohibition. Pinterest

The well-meaning idea of Prohibition backfired spectacularly. It was a huge boost to organized crime in general, and to Italian organized crime in particular. In Prohibition’s world, Italian gangsters were particularly well-positioned to prosper, because they were set apart from other ethnic criminals by their links to the Italian and Sicilian mafia. Thanks to those Old Country connections, ethnic Italian criminals in America could draw upon a tradition of sophisticated, hierarchical, and disciplined criminal organizations.

In addition to an effective model, they also had access to experienced personnel who could readily duplicate the Old Country’s system in the US. By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, modern organized crime, and the Italian-American mafia, had become well established and well-nigh ineradicable. They remain with us to this day.

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.