Made Men

by Marcel Danesi

  The phrase “La Cosa Nostra” literally means in Italian “our thing,” and it was an alternative name for the Mafia first revealed in 1963 by the informer Joe Valachi. It was a term used by the U.S. Mafia about themselves and their activities. Abbreviated to LCN, it is now standard law enforcement usage when referring to the American Mafia. Organized crime groups refer to themselves by a variety of codenames. In Chicago it is “The Outfit,” in Buffalo “The Arm,” and in New England “The Office.”[12]

  It was not necessary for Cosa Nostra to construct a mythology about itself; it could get that from its Sicilian predecessor. It became a more realistic, urban-based organization that shed the rural origins it had inherited from the Mafia, although it did not eliminate its arcane symbolism and initiation rites.

  The irony in the growth of the American Cosa Nostra lies in Prohibition. As we saw earlier in the book, Prohibition was the political expression of the worldview of largely rural Americans of German, Scottish, and Scandinavian backgrounds who were devout Christians and wary of urban lifestyles, especially those of immigrant groups living in the cities, seeing their lifestyles as based on vice. For these people, the urban centers were dens of iniquity. It was this rural force that ultimately allowed Cosa Nostra to take a stranglehold on the United States. And, of course, Hollywood and popular culture entered the picture early on to bolster the image of the gangsters. “As Cosa Nostra’s public profile grew in the minds of the public,” notes Reynolds, “an aura of glamour rose around the gangsters, fueled by celebrity associations.”[13] The effects of this association have persisted, gaining even more force through movies and television.

  Street Myths

  Gangs that emerge in modern-day prisons or on the streets also spin myths about themselves. These, however, do not look to the past, as do traditional gangs, but to the present, ensconced as they are in a prison culture and street mind-set of brutal violence. These gangs are really bands of organized thugs. Common citizens are irrelevant to them; they are only seen as a source of booty and can be dispensed with tersely. The real fight is with other street gangs for territory, power, and sex.

  The new gangs engage in all kinds of criminal activities that the traditional Mafias would have found distasteful, including human organ trafficking, underage prostitution, rare animal smuggling, and vehicle theft. The street gangs thrive on the conditions of modern-day urban life and the aspiration toward affluence and the quest for pleasures of all kinds (sexual and others). In a way, the prohibition of vice-based activities is the incentive that drives street gangs. Lunde puts it as follows:

  Markets will always exist where products are illegal or where legal excise revenues make them appear unreasonably expensive to the consumer. In this way legislators and organized criminals exist in a symbiotic relationship. With each new piece of restrictive or prohibitive legislation, with each new attempt to levy higher taxes on products, the opportunities for organized criminals to adapt to new markets are extended.[14]

  The best example of how a street gang confabulates its origins is the Hells Angels. As previously pointed out, the gang was founded by World War II veterans in Fontana, a steel town outside of Los Angeles. The veterans felt a sense of alienation from the mainstream society to which they had returned, which had changed for them and which changed in its own view of the veterans. They felt discarded and lonely. On Independence Day in 1947, 4,000 motorcyclists rode into the town of Hollister, California, spurred on by the veterans as part of a rally. The Highway Patrol was called in, and 100 bikers were taken into custody. A similar rally on Labor Day, drawing 6,000 bikers, brought havoc once again. This encouraged a small group among the bikers to organize themselves in the San Bernardino chapter of the motorcycle club in 1948. They quickly developed their own street story, claiming to be unique as a real American gang, complete with their own new “horse,” the motorbike. The called themselves “One Per Cent,” implying that 99 percent of bikers were decent citizens, while they formed the 1 percent that would instill fear in anyone who messed with them.

  In this case, the mythology is an implicit one—that of the outsider, the rebel, the freedom-seeking cowboy. This is, of course, a version of the more general mythology on which the United States, the rebel British colony, was founded. The unspoken claim to legitimacy is transparent. It was in 1957 that a high school toughie named “Sonny” Barger founded his own motorcycle club, which he named the Hell’s Angels (with the apostrophe), unaware that other clubs already existed with the same name (without the apostrophe). Barger contacted the clubs and proposed a merger, gradually building it into the modern-day Hells Angels, with its own initiation rites, elected officers, and set of principles. The club also became mythologized by the movies, starting with The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando as an imitation Sonny Barger.

  Aware of the need to maintain distinctiveness, Barger took concrete steps to ensure that the club would survive being assimilated into the morass of an ever-expanding biker culture, as Lunde discusses:

  Under Barger’s guidance they took steps to protect themselves from imitators in order to franchise the Angels “brand”; the Angels were legally incorporated in 1966 with an issue of 500 shares and the drawing up of a memorandum and articles of association, all with the wholly laudable aim of the promotion and advancement of motorcycle riding, motorcycle clubs, and highway safety. A patent on the Flying Death’s Head emblem was taken out in 1972. Revenue from breach of copyright cases has been used to establish defense funds for Angels charged with offenses from murder to racketeering. The Angels have also been able to secure tax-exempt status with the formation of the Church of the Angel, of which there are numerous pastors.[15]

  Although the Angels now claim to have become a legal and law-abiding club, events tell a different story. The thing to note here is that street gangs like the Angels do not trace their origins to ancient legends. They are born on the street and thus create a different kind of street mythology for themselves, based on a lifestyle and appearance code that identifies them as distinct. Biker gangs similar in outlook to the Angels include the Outlaws and the Bandidos, both of which play on a name that means so much in American history. Although it is of Old Norse origin, the word outlaw brings to mind cattle rustlers and gunslingers of the Wild West. And that is precisely the mythology that seems to be unconsciously at work in these gangs. The main difference is in having replaced the horse with the motorcycle.

  Technology

  As the late Canadian social philosopher and communications guru Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) often claimed, culture, social evolution, and scientific innovation are so intertwined that we hardly ever realize their interconnection. McLuhan saw changes in communications technology as affecting our ways of thinking, as well as our social institutions. Since electronic signals can cross borders virtually unimpeded, McLuhan characterized the world that was being united by electronic media as the “global village.” Current Internet technologies have changed how we process information, interact, and communicate.

  Everyone has had to adapt. This includes the Mafia, which is now going online more and more to pursue its objectives. But, at the same time, the new technologies have empowered people more than ever before to fight the criminals. One can gain support against criminal gangs by using Facebook and other social media. Because it is not dependent on space and time, such media create problems for criminal organizations that depend on localizing their targets and defending themselves through physical intimidation. Victims of extortion who lack confidence and shy away from speaking their mind might be more inclined to use social media advantageously. It is no coincidence that the Addiopizzo movement is gaining its strength primarily through such sites.

  But the criminals are adaptive. They have entered cyberspace as well. Technology has literally opened up the global village to everyone. As Lunde insightfully points out,

  Attempts by law enforcement and other agencies to provide a single definition of organized crime have been confounded
by the fact that the activities of the criminal underworld are, by their nature, kaleidoscopic, constantly responding to shifts in market conditions and exploiting the myriad money-making opportunities provided by the legitimate overworld.[16]

  The global spread of organized criminal organizations is a product of the global economy and global digital communication systems. Criminal cultures are no longer limited to having their headquarters in their countries of origin; they have found new locales in cyberspace and are less and less culture-bound organizations. But this is a two-edged sword for the organizations. Their strength has always been in existing on the native soil, so to speak, where they can claim authenticity and historical lineage. In cyberspace, they risk losing this crucial component of identity. As they become more technologically sophisticated, they also risk disintegrating into anonymous criminal gangs.

  The claim to distinctiveness is at risk. It remains to be seen if this will, in fact, be a factor in combating the lure of criminal culture. The life expectancy of the Mafia may be at risk if it loses its mythic basis. The world is being increasingly dominated by recently constituted street and prison gangs, like the Russian Mafiya, who do not feed on mythologies as do the traditional gangs, the Mafia, ’Ndrangheta, Camorra, Yakuza, and Triads. Their viciousness is now condemnable, not justifiable, as they deal in all kinds of evil activities, preying on innocent young women in their global prostitution market, pushing drugs worldwide, and extorting money through fraudulent Internet schemes. It is relevant to note that in January 2013, the media reported the murder of Aslan Usoyan, a seventy-five-year-old mobster in Russia known as “Grandpa Hassan” and considered the last vor v zakone (the traditional Mafia tied to the Gulag system).

  The Sicilian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, and the Camorra drew their strength from joining forces with those in power. Their purported origin is evident in the archaic symbolism, rites, and myths they maintain. But history is being rewritten daily on the computer screen, changing how we experience it. Russian Mafias and common motorcycle thugs will continue to gain more and more of a stake in the criminal world because they are not tied to these arcane and anachronistic views. The world is changing, and although the Mafia knows how to adapt, it is resistant to radically changing its traditions and overall outlook. And this may be its Achilles’ heel.

  This in no way implies that the traditional Mafia has not jumped on the cybercrime bandwagon, as have the street thugs. Cybercrime is one of most rapidly growing forms of criminal activity today. Modern-day Mafiosi use technology to their advantage, employing sophisticated digital devices to conduct communications that cannot be intercepted. In 2012, in the Niagara region of Canada, a criminal group involved in the importing of drugs conducted its communications via PGP, a cellular-based encrypted messaging technology developed for the military. Ironically, people use social media, like Facebook, to praise Mafiosi as they would pop stars. In fact, the image of Al Pacino in the role of Tony Montana (Scarface) is one of the most popular images used as a profile picture on Facebook. Ironically, Pasquale Manfredi, a wanted ’Ndrangheta boss and one of the most wanted of all Italian criminals, was arrested when the police were able to track him down through his Facebook account, being registered under the handle of Scarface.

  As Lunde perceptively notes, “While many people work from home, using a computer, it is just as easy and convenient for the criminal to do likewise.”[17] But the activities the traditional Mafias engage in tend to be the older ones—fraud, extortion, money laundering, drug trafficking, and, of course, the planning of vendettas. The activities of the new and recently formed gangs include everything else, including such reprehensible crimes as pornography of the vilest kind. But the code of omertà has not completely impeded the Mafia from engaging in some of these new forms of criminality, seemingly going opportunistically against its own moral principles. Lunde writes the following:

  Until the 1940s and 1950s, organized crime, in the main, did not include drug running in its activities because it was considered morally unacceptable. However, from the 1960s, organized crime became very much involved in the trade of illicit narcotics. Similarly, until relatively recently, many of the organized crime bosses refused to get involved in the trade of pornography. This situation is now changing, as they begin to see the massive profits that such operations can realize.[18]

  The Mafia has a strong survival instinct, adapting to changing conditions in the world. The move into narcotics is a case in point. It actually occurred long before the Internet Age, on October 12, 1957, at a meeting of bosses from the Sicilian Mafia and the American Cosa Nostra at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo. It was Lucky Luciano who had organized the meeting. Cosa Nostra was represented by Joe Bonanno and others; the Sicilians were represented by Genco Russo and a few others. The agenda of the meeting was to organize a move into the international narcotics trade, which was a growing market at the time.

  Although the Mafia clans on both sides of the Atlantic by and large opposed drug trafficking as a legitimate enterprise, given the code of omertà, they gradually gave in, allowing profit to override honor. Hypocrisy has always been rampant among thieves. The Mafia is no exception. Luciano got around the code by simply suggesting a conglomerate of more than 150 clans who agreed to the new enterprise, calling it La Cupola, headed by “Little Bird” Greco and twelve members. The Cupola thrived, but the new fragmentary structure of the Mafia eventually shattered the peace among the clans and an internecine war broke out over the traditional and modern visions of the code. Violence ensued, leading to the demise of La Cupola. But the structure of the Mafia was changing, moving away from it rural nature to more urbanized versions of itself. In time, the drug traffickers won out. In 1981, under the leadership of Totò Riina, they started assassinating those opposed to the new world order. As Reynolds notes, events such as this “trace the fall

  of one of the world’s most powerful secret societies from a zenith of authority and dominance down to a band of disorganized thugs, many of whose exploits would be humorous if they were not so deadly.”[19]

  1. Ernst A. Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944).

  2. George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Vol. 3, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), 6.

  3. Paul Lunde, Organized Crime: An Inside Guide to the World’s Most Successful Industry (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2004), 55.

  4. Lunde, Organized Crime, 57.

  5. See Umberto Santino, La cosa e il nome (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2000), 119–28.

  6. Lunde, Organized Crime, 15.

  7. John Lawrence Reynolds, Shadow People: Inside History’s Most Notorious Secret Societies (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2006), 177–78.

  8. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (London: Cape, 1964), 23.

  9. Lunde, Organized Crime, 95–96.

  10. Reynolds, Shadow People, 164.

  11. Reynolds, Shadow People, 165.

  12. Lunde, Organized Crime, 118.

  13. Reynolds, Shadow People, 165.

  14. Lunde, Organized Crime, 37.

  15. Lunde, Organized Crime, 174.

  16. Lunde, Organized Crime, 8.

  17. Lunde, Organized Crime, 49.

  18. Lunde, Organized Crime, 51.

  19. Reynolds, Shadow People, 173.

  Chapter 7

  Conclusion

  The main objective of this book has been to provide a profile of the made man and the symbolic entrapments laid out by criminal organizations (initiation rites, names, myths, and so on) to recruit young men. By understanding what the traps are, it becomes easier to see through them and deconstruct the mystique of Mafia culture. The Addiomafia can then be guided by a process of unmasking the criminal emperors as having no clothes.

  Why is Mafia culture still so attractive to so many young people? Such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and many others are glorified in film, song, and legend. T
hey appeal to an inner need—a “need to emphasize the chaos created by criminals in order to grasp the benefits of order.”[1] Outlaws are appealing because we both fear and admire them. Their life is always at risk, but it is an exciting life, not a boring one. Every moment of their existence is pregnant with danger and change.[2] The underworld has a strong magnetism to it. As Jean Genet once put it, by “repudiating the virtues” of our boring everyday world, “criminals agree to organize a forbidden universe.”[3]

  The gangster lifestyle is a “live wire” lifestyle. Like any live wire act in a circus, it is exciting, thrilling, and felt to be a form of escape from boredom and routine. Origin myths in secret societies add to the mystery of the outlaws, enhancing the excitement even more. John Lawrence Reynolds notes that this lure may lie in affluence, in that affluent societies are more intrigued by them than poorer ones:

  Their entertainment value is obvious, but we may also need threats to our security in order to fully appreciate it. In the process, we speculate about things we cannot explain, and often become fixed on threats and events well removed from our day-to-day lives. It’s more comforting that way, which perhaps explains why the greatest concentration of secret society concerns rests in urban Europe and affluent North America, whose residents have the most to lose materially and spiritually.[4]