16. The Mafia’s Origins as Tools of Oppression
Don Corleone’s “honorable” traits are based on the real life Joseph Bonanno, a pretentious head of the Bonanno crime family. He wrote a self-serving memoir after his forced retirement, and referred to his generation’s mafia bosses as “Fathers” who headed “honorable societies”. He claimed that he and the mob avoided drugs for the reasons described in The Godfather – moral revulsion, and to avoid the heat drugs draw. As Bonanno put it: “My tradition outlaws narcotics. It has always been that ‘men of honor’ don’t deal in narcotics“. In reality, mobsters, including Bonanno, were involved in illegal drugs since the mob’s birth. Another myth is that the mafia originated as champions of the weak, who stuck it to the rich and powerful. Instead, Mafiosi were often hired as muscle by rich Sicilian landowners and magnates to intimidate or kill peasants who objected to their exploitation and de facto serfdom.
In the New World, the mafia continued as goons for hire by the rich to keep the working stiffs in their place. Mafiosi were routinely used as strikebreakers, to intimidate or kill union organizers, and cow those who sought better conditions or higher wages from their employers. In short, the mafia were not some modern equivalents of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, who stole from the rich to give to the poor – or at least stole from the rich, rather than the poor. Instead, they were closer to the Sheriff of Nottingham’s thugs. They helped further oppress the already oppressed, exploit the already exploited, and rob the already impoverished. Mafiosi money-making schemes and rackets seldom targeted the rich and powerful. Instead, mobsters got rich by sticking their hands into the pockets of the weak and poor.
