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Weird Mafia Myths Popularized by the Godfather and Media

Khalid Elhassan July 15, 2022 37 min

10. How Mussolini Crushed the Mafia in Italy

Just as Prohibition produced a business boom for organized crime in the US in general, and the Italian-American mafia in particular, Benito Mussolini and his fascists came to power in Italy. Until then, no Italian government had managed to keep the Sicilian mafia and the Camorra in check. Nor did any Italian government since manage to pull that off since. Mussolini crushed the mafia. Farcical buffoon he might have been, but that was one thing the Italian dictator managed to pull off.

Italian Mafiosi rounded up by the fascists. Okruchy Historii

The Sicilian Mafia and Camorra throve, and still do, in Italy’s corrupt political culture. They worked the system and mastered its intricacies. Mafiosi subverted politicians, police, and judges with bribes or threats, and bent them to their will until organized crime became a state within the state. The fascists were not ones to share power or tolerate challenges, however, and Mussolini was neither concerned with nor constrained by legalities in dealing with the Sicilian mafia and Camorra. He simply bypassed the criminal justice system and sent in the army and Black Shirts to round up Mafiosi en masse, and kill 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.