Everywhere we look, we can quickly see actions that are not in accordance with our morals and ethics in society. You could say that crime is everywhere and anywhere. Throughout history, people have known various forms of crime which have taken place from the time of the first civilizations to the present day.
One of the most sinister and sophisticated forms of crime is organized crime, and the most extensive form of this is the mafia. A mafia organization is a group of people with a specific goal to carry out a criminal act by combining terrorism and politics. Today, every mafia group is associated with certain political circles and directions, both from the left and right side of politics, and this of course destroys the basic concept of democracy, because the mafia also unites various well-known political faces and thereby nurtures its reputation in society and achieves the goals it sets for itself. Usually, these goals are neither legal nor moral nor ethical.
Such cases can be seen everywhere. If we flip through history books, we can see various assassinations and murders of important political figures. Already in ancient times, assassinations were carried out, such as the Ides of March on March 15, 44 BC and various assassinations of important political figures during the conflict between the East and the West – the Cold War. During this period, we can remember the infamous assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Of course, this is also the case today. Mafia companies are engaged in various organ trafficking, migrant smuggling across borders, and drug and arms trafficking, and these activities are extremely common in the European Union, especially due to the proximity of the Middle East and the war with Ukraine and Russia. These organizations want to cover up this action as much as possible, which is why some mafia organizations, such as the Camorra of Naples, associate themselves with politics, because that way they will have more power and of course these actions and the execution of crimes will be very hidden from the public, and with this they will also have control over us by the law enforcement authorities themselves. With these actions, the democracy of the present, modern time, which is associated with capitalism, is changing. Also because of this, various parties can be created that advocate terrorism, with which the mafia, such as the Italian Ndragheta, is even associated.
.
If we take, for example, the period of severe terrorist attacks in the so-called Years of Lead or in Italian Anni di piombo, of course we must not forget the terrorist attack in Bologna at the railway station. During these years, there were extreme political contradictions between the left and the right and the neo-fascists of the time, because of which the Italian mafia actually began to interfere in politics. To understand why Italy has such a big crime problem, we must first go over the fact that the mafia has been in Italian and Sicilian culture for a long time and even part of the culture in this country. Practically indestructible and deeply rooted in the culture of Italy itself, the civilian population is also threatened and even in some cases victims of attacks and abuses. Of course, we must not forget Italy’s past either, as Italy was once a group of countries, but after unification there were major political conflicts with the arrival of Mussolini’s fascism, and later terrorism developed from this, resulting in the mafia delving into politics itself. We must not forget that fascists were extremely violent in nature, even Mussolini himself, so it is not at all surprising that in Italy such forms increasingly developed and became anchored in the mafia. That this country experienced political divisions extremely quickly is seen today in the problems of today’s extreme right-wing party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia).
On the one hand an extremely beautiful country with a rich culture and language, outstanding art from literature to painting, on the other hand an extremely bloodthirsty, sometimes even dangerous country, we must not forget that Italy is ranked third for countries in which terrorism is most developed.
But we must not forget about other mafias, for example the Russian mafia organization Bratva, which was already active in the years of the last century, even during the time of Russian Empire when similar forms of crime began, all the way to the Soviet Union, in which the Russian mafia was the most active and even contributed more than half of the country’s entire economy. We must not forget that the Soviet Union was a country of hard communism, the political ideologies of both Vladimir Lenin and Stalin and later presidents. These political ideologies, like in Italy, contributed to the preservation of these organizations and even today, when the war between Ukraine and Russia is taking place in this place, the Russian mafia contributes weapons, especially to Ukraine, and exploits and abuses it in this area as well.
To summarize, political ideologies and contradictions between the various poles of democracy are the main problems for the preservation of mafia organizations. We have a huge number of countries with great political contradictions that were already affected in the 20th century by terrorist ideologies that people deliberately created just to get a source of income and to receive both prestige and power.
Since the beginning of time, humans have longed for power, already in the time of kings, pharaohs and other rulers until today. The main goal of all of us is the fight for money, because money is obviously the essence of the whole world. It is the reason for so many tragedies that have happened, not just the worst wars in history, such as World War II. Acting on the desire for power, humans are the way they are today, and because of this, we live in a world where theft, murder and crime have no borders.
Humankind’s greatest enemy is himself. There is no one else who is against him. Due to human carelessness and greed, terrible things can happen in which a larger population of people can suffer. The mob is one of those factors. They want huge amounts of easy money with which they can gain prestige and power on political seats and manipulate the people served. They play with people like dolls, only for their personal benefit.
In Italy, official, state institutions are under the influence of the Camorra, one of the largest mafia organizations; in Russia, the mafia has been taking care of the economy for many years and is even interfering in the war between Russia and Ukraine. The mafia can immediately control the entire society around us and we can also watch the mafia very much on the movie screen.
Some mafia organizations even present themselves with films on this topic and use them as propaganda, and these films are of course one of the most watchable films due to their rich content and message. The evidence is various films, such as The Godfather from 1972, in which even the American mafia of Joseph Colombo contributed to the filming of the film. Today, this film is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Of course, this also includes the question of a person’s criticism of the films and books themselves, how he takes them and approaches them critically and thoughtfully. The worst thing is that such things, as far as these crimes are concerned, happen in the developed world: in the USA, which is considered a world superpower and one of the most developed countries, as well as in Europe, where most countries strive for the equality of people in their democracy. In this case, we could apply the thought of the famous French realist Honore de Balzac, who said: “Behind every fortune there is a crime,”
Written by: Alex Tomasini
